‘You no longer roll your eyes,’ said she, ‘when you argue, and redden and strut and heave up your breast when I venture to object to your views. You have become thoroughly genteel, my dear, in your tastes and habits. Your captain will have a treasure in you. And it is very well that you did not marry him before he sailed, for I am certain that his influence as a husband would not have been so considerable as it has proved as a lover. Both he and you are now having plenty of leisure for thought, and when you come together at the altar you will know exactly what you are doing.’ In the month of November my little stepsister died of peritonitis. I offered to nurse her when it reached my ears that she was ill in bed. Mr. Stanford thanked me; and whilst I nursed her I learned to love the poor little delicate creature, and my heart reproached me for the unconquerable coldness I had ever felt towards her when I stooped and kissed her white face in death and beheld a faint copy of my mother there. I cannot tell to what degree Mr. Stanford was affected by his loss; his colourless countenance betrayed but little of what might pass in his mind. Had I found his grief very great, then the loneliness of his state would have pleaded, and I might have forced myself into some show of civility. But there was nothing in his behaviour after his child’s death to appeal, and we speedily passed again into our old cold relations of separate existence and fixed dislike of him on my side as a fellow who had impudently thrust himself into my father’s place. The nursing of the poor child, however, together with my grief at her death and my secret fretting over not hearing from Tom, made me look ill if I did not feel so. My aunt was concerned and insisted upon my seeing her medical adviser, who recommended her, spite of its being winter, to take me to the seaside. It was the month of February--hard, cold weather. My aunt knew and liked Ramsgate, and proposed that town. Thither we went and took lodgings in Wellington Crescent, a pleasant row of buildings immediately overlooking the English Channel.