Mr Maclean’s absence was really, I found, not to be prolonged beyond the two nights; so I could write Dick word to fetch me home on the following day; but I resolved, before I went, to have some sort of explanatory conversation with Mrs Graham, with respect to her dream of the night before. I told nothing of it to Bessie; for I felt she would spoil everything perhaps by her awkwardness in handling the subject, or wound the poor girl’s feelings by too abrupt a reference to her grief. But I watched Mrs Graham leave the house at about eleven o’clock to take her little charge out for his morning walk, and as soon as Bessie descended to the kitchen quarters to give her orders for the day, I put on my bonnet and shawl and ran after the nurse. There was a cold wind blowing from the north, and I knew I should find her in the sheltered shrubbery, where she had been told to take the child. It extended for some distance, and when I came up with her we were quite out of sight and hearing of the house.
‘A fine cold morning!’ I remarked, by way of a beginning.
‘Very cold, madam.’
‘With the wind in the north. A nasty day for the sea—I pity the ships in the channel.’
To this she made no response.
‘Have you ever been on the sea, Mrs Graham?’
‘Yes! once!’ with a shudder.
‘And did you like it?’
‘Like it? Oh! for God’s sake, madam, don’t speak of it, for I cannot bear the thought even.’
‘You were unfortunate, perhaps? You had experience of a storm? But the sea is not always rough, Mrs Graham.’