‘What is your malady, Miss Lee?’
‘It is consumption,’ she answered.
‘I could not have told. I try to think and to realise; but without recollection how can one even guess? But now that you tell me it is consumption, I understand the word, and I see the disease in you. I hope it is not bad; I hope the voyage will cure it.’
‘It is very bad,’ she answered, looking down, and speaking softly, and closing the volume upon her lap, ‘and I fear the voyage will not cure it. But I fear only for my mother’s sake. I have no desire to live as I am, ill as I am. Yet I pray that I may not die at sea. I shrink from the idea of being buried at sea. But how melancholy is our conversation! You come to me full of a dreadful trouble of your own, and here am I increasing your sadness by my talk! Oh! I wish you could tell me something about yourself. But we know your initials. That is surely a very great thing. I am going to take the letters “A. C.”; and put all the surnames and Christian names against them that I can think of. One of them might be your name.’
‘I fear I should not know it if I saw it,’ said I.
‘We can but try,’ said she, smiling; ‘we must try everything. How proud it would make me to be the first to help you to remember.’
‘What did your twin sister die of?’
‘Of consumption. Mother believes that such a voyage as I am taking would have saved her life. I fear not—I fear not. My father died of that malady. He was a shipowner at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and we live at Newcastle, or close to it, at a place called Jesmond, and I was hoping before I met you that I should hear an accent in your speech to tell me that you belong to our part of England, for I believe I should know a Northumbrian, at least a Tyneside Northumbrian, anywhere, no matter how cultivated his or her speech might be. But you do not belong to our part.’
‘Have you sisters living?’
‘None. I am now the only child. Mother has been a widow six years. But our talk is again melancholy.’