“I never thought I could love a child as I love you, little Gertie. I am a hard, wicked woman, no doubt, but I want you to be good, and surely I may pray for that. God bless you, Gertie, and make your life as happy as you are sweet and pure. Good-by.” She put the child gently from her, and went quickly into her own room, where she could be alone, and I am almost certain that the parting with her daughter did not hurt her half as much as the parting with Gertie Westbrooke. CHAPTER XX. ON THE SEA. They had been at sea three days, and Edith in her warm wraps and pretty hood was sitting on deck in the large easy-chair her husband had bought in Liverpool for this purpose. Every comfort which ingenuity could devise and money pay for he had procured for her in order to make the voyage bearable. One of the largest, most commodious staterooms was hers, so that she need not feel too much confined, and when all this did not avail to avert the evils of sea-sickness, he and Norah nursed her assiduously, until she was able to be lifted in his arms and carried upon deck, where, with the fresh breeze blowing in her face, she felt her strength coming back, and thoroughly enjoyed the blue expanse of sky above, and the deep, dark waters beneath, which now were smooth and quiet as a river. The colonel was never sick, and walked the planks from first to last as firmly and steadily as a general at the head of his troops; but alas for poor Godfrey. During the voyage out he had been perfectly well, even in a storm, and boasted much of his ability to keep so. “You have only to exercise your will and you are well enough,” he said, with a certain sniff of contempt for the weaker ones who are never seen from port to port. “Pluck is all you need to keep you straight, even when chairs and tables and shovel and tongs are dancing a cotillon, and raising Ned generally.”