Then some warm milk, flavoured with something very nice, was given him; the good nun gently bathed his face and hands, and Jack wanted to talk. He tried his kind nurse with French and English; but she only smiled gently and shook her head. And so Jack lay quietly thinking until he happened to catch sight of his own hand and arm. Heavens! it was only skin and bone; in one day he seemed to have turned into a skeleton! This gave him fresh food for thought, and his mystification was growing deeper when his nurse murmured something, among which Jack thought he caught the name Irma, when a soft footstep approached the bed and a young girl of exceeding beauty, gladness beaming from her eyes, took Jack’s hand, saying softly in French, ‘Good-morning, monsieur, welcome back to life! It has been a hard struggle, but you have conquered.’ The features of the young girl did not seem altogether strange, though Jack could not for the moment recollect where he had seen them before. Something of his uncertainty must have showed in his face, for the girl continued, ‘You are wondering where you are, how you got here, and who I am?’ ‘I confess, mademoiselle, I am puzzled. At first I thought I was in the prison at Sebastopol; but’---- and Jack looked round him. The girl laughed gaily. ‘You think more of where you are than of anything else,’ she said. ‘Well, you are in the house of Count Pauloff; he brought you here from Sebastopol.’ ‘Ha! now I know who you are. You must be the count’s sister; you are so much alike, yet so much more handsome’---- Then Jack checked himself and blushed; but Irma, for such was her name, seemed by no means displeased. ‘I am the count’s sister,’ she said. ‘I saw you at the Alma.’ ‘Ah that dreadful day, when poor Alexis was wounded and would have been slain but for you!’ and Irma covered her face with her hands as though to shut out some disagreeable vision. ‘The count told me yesterday’---- began Jack. ‘Yesterday?’ interrogated Irma with a smile. ‘I mean, as we rode into Sebastopol from the picket who captured me.’ Irma opened her eyes very wide; then they suddenly dimmed, as though with tears. ‘Alas! monsieur,’ she said, ‘that is two weeks ago to-morrow.’ Jack looked and felt horrified. ‘And I have been here all that time?’ he said. Irma nodded her head. Jack looked at his thin arms. ‘That accounts for these then,’ he said, and sank back wearily. ‘Monsieur,’ said Irma, ‘you have been very, very ill; we long despaired of saving your life. We have watched you day and night. You have been delirious all the time, and talking, oh, so much! till our hearts ached for you. We could not understand one word you said; but we thought you called always for mother--mother.’ She pronounced it ‘mauzher.’ ‘Tell me, who is “mauzher”?’ Jack smiled and explained that it must have been his mother he raved of.