"Blue eyed, golden-haired, with a face like an angel," she repeated to herself, as she descended the stairs to the lower deck and walked to the door, around which several women were gathered with anxious concern upon their faces.
CHAPTER IX.
BESSIE IS PROMOTED.
"She is took very bad, mum," one of the women said to Lucy, as she stood aside to let her pass into the close, hot cabin, where Bessie was talking wildly and incessantly of her father and mother, and of Grey, while Mrs. Goodnough and Jennie tried in vain to quiet her.
"What is it? How long has she been this way?" Lucy asked, and the voluble Jennie replied:
"An' sure, mum, just afther ye left it sthruck to her head, and she wint out of herself intirely, and goes on awful about her father and mother, who died in Rome with the faver and is buried in some stonehape or the likes of it, and of Grey Jerry, who, she says, is on the ship and won't come to her. An' sure, would ye be so kind as to try yerself what ye can do?"
"Talking of Grey!" Lucy repeated, ten times more perplexed than she had been before. "How does she know my nephew, and who is she?" Then, turning to Mrs. Goodnough, she continued: "There is some mystery here which I must solve, I fancied this morning that she might be Bessie McPherson, of Stoneleigh Park, Bangor, but my nephew tells me that she died in Rome—and if so, who is this young girl?"
"Oh, madam," Mrs. Goodnough began, "there can be no harm in telling you now, though she didn't want anybody to know; not for herself—she ain't a bit ashamed, but some of her high friends is, and made her promise to keep to herself who she was; but you are bound to know, and she is Miss Bessie McPherson, of Stoneleigh, and she is not dead at all, and never has been. She had the fever in Rome, but she got well, and it was her mother who died there; this is the truth, and may God forgive me if I have done harm by my tattling."
"You have done no harm," Lucy replied, "but on the contrary a great good to Miss McPherson, whom I shall at once have removed to my state-room. Fortunately I am alone, and can share it with her as well as not."