Our conversation almost wholly concerned Alice Lee. The mother’s heart was full of her sweet daughter. When she began to speak of her she could talk of nothing else. She hoped that the voyage would benefit the girl, but the note of a deep misgiving trembled in the expression of her hope, and I could not doubt that secretly within herself she thought of her child as lost to her. Do you wonder that I should have found such a warm-hearted sympathetic friend as Mrs. Lee in so short a time? When I look back I believe I can understand how it was: she was a woman with a heart heavy with sorrow, but in me she beheld a person far more deeply afflicted than she was in her fears for her child, or could be in her loss of her. Her daughter was dying--she might die; but the memory of the girl’s sweetness, her purity, her angelic character would be the mother’s whilst she drew breath. But what had gone out of _my_ life? She could not imagine--but she would guess that love--love not less precious nor less holy than hers for her child lay black, and, perhaps, extinguished for ever in my past. It might be the love of a parent, of a sister, nay of a sweetheart: thus she would reason; not dimly for an instant conceiving me to be a married woman with children; but some sort of love, not less precious and holy than her own, might have passed out of my life by the eclipse of my mind. This she would conjecture, and the sympathy of her own deep affliction would be mine in a sense of friendship that association might easily ripen into affection. In a word, she pitied me with a heart that asked pity for herself, and she pitied me the more lovingly because of her daughter’s tender touching interest in me. We paced the deck for something less than an hour, during which we were occasionally addressed by the passengers, and once joined by one of the ladies who had contributed to what I may call my outfit. But this was towards the end of our stroll, after we had talked long and deeply of Alice Lee, and after Mrs. Lee had opened her heart to me in many little memories of her life before God had widowed her. When we entered the saloon my companion went to her berth, and a moment after put her head out with her finger upon her lip and a slight smile of gratification, by which I understood that Alice still slumbered; so I walked to the stairs which conducted to the steerage, but as I put my foot on the first step, the door of a berth opened, and Mrs. Webber came forth. She immediately saw me, and called: ‘Where are you going, my dear Miss C----?’ ‘I am going to my cabin.’