My complexion, however, had cleared with the improvement of my health; the dingy sallow colour was gone out of my cheeks, and a faint bloom had taken its place. It was as though my youth struggled to show its rosy face through the mask which calamity had stamped upon my countenance. This faint bloom, as I call it, might, in spite of the interlacery of fine lines, have brought my appearance to within a few years of my real age had it not been for my white hair, which was so fleecy and thin that you would only think of looking for the like of it on the head of an old lady of seventy or eighty years. Indeed, what with my figure, which was that of a fine young woman of seven- or eight-and twenty, what with my eyes and teeth, which corresponded with my figure, and what with my white hair, white eyebrow, scarred temple and finely-lined skin, as though the flesh had been inlaid with a spider’s web, I doubtless presented to the eyes of my fellow-passengers the most extraordinary compound of youth and age it could have entered into the nimblest imagination among them to figure. Nearly the whole of my time was spent in the company of Alice Lee. I read to her, I helped her to dress, I accompanied her on deck, indeed I was scarcely ever absent from her side. Mrs. Lee encouraged our companionship. Whatever served to sustain her daughter’s spirits, whatever contributed to lighten the tedium of the girl’s long hours of confinement to her cabin, must needs be welcome to the devoted mother. Often it happens that the sufferer from the disease of consumption, though of an angelic sweetness of heart, and though of a most beautiful, loving, gentle nature, will unconsciously be rendered petulant by the ministrations of one, by the devoted association, and by the heart-breaking anxiety of one, who may be the dearest of all human beings to her in this world, even her own mother. She is fretted by the importunities of love. The devotion is too anxious, too eager, too restless. Mrs. Lee tried hard to conceal what was in her heart, but it must have vent in some shape or form. It rendered her vigilance impassioned. Indeed, I once took the liberty of telling her that the expression of pain and grief her face unconsciously wore when she sat with Alice, and heard her cough, or beheld any increase of languor in the movement of her eyes or in her speech, proved harmful to her child by poignantly reminding her of her mother’s sorrow and of the reason of it. And so it came about that Mrs. Lee welcomed my intimate association with her daughter and promoted it by leaving us much alone together.