The concealment of my face gave me confidence. People might stare at me now, and welcome. There were a number of passengers lounging on sofas and chairs in various parts of the saloon, held under shelter, no doubt, by the weather, for though the sun was shining there was a brisk breeze blowing which came cold with the white spray that it flashed off the broken heads of the swelling running waters. The first person to see me as I was passing to Miss Lee’s berth was Mrs. Webber. She sprang with youthful activity from her chair and came to me, floating and rolling over the slanting deck with her hands outstretched.
‘I have quite made up my mind about you, Miss C——,’ she exclaimed. ‘I have invented a history for you, and I shall never rest until you have recovered your memory, and are able to tell me how far I am right or wrong.’
‘Let me at once thank you for your great kindness, Mrs. Webber,’ said I, returning the bows of the ladies and gentlemen who were now looking towards me.
‘Not a word of thanks, if you please. When are we to have a good long talk together?—Oh, sooner than some of these days! Did you receive the volume of poems I gave to Mrs. Richards?’
I replied that I had received the book, and that I had read the poems she had marked, and that I did not doubt I should find them very beautiful when my mind had become stronger. We stood a few minutes conversing, and I then went to Miss Lee’s cabin.
The mother and daughter were together; the mother knitting, and the daughter reading or seeming to read. The girl looked very pale. There was a haggard air about the eyes as though she had not slept, but her smile of greeting was one of inexpressible sweetness, and when I took her hand she drew me to her and pressed her lips to my cheek. The mother also received me with as much warmth and kindness as though we had been old friends.
I seated myself by the side of Miss Lee, and after the three of us had conversed for awhile, Mrs. Lee said:
‘Alice has made out a long list of names. You will be surprised by her industry and imagination, for she has had no book of names to help her,’ and opening a desk that lay upon the deck she extracted a number of sheets of note paper filled with names—female Christian names and surnames written in a delicate hand in pencil.
I held the sheets of paper in my hand;—there was a faint odour of rose upon them; I knew not what that odour was—I could not have given it a name; yet it caused me to glance at Alice Lee with some dim fancy in my mind of an autumn garden and of an atmosphere perfumed by the breath of dying flowers. Was this dim fancy a memory? It came and went with subtle swiftness, but it left me motionless with my eyes fixed upon the sheets of paper in my hand.
‘We will go through those names together,’ said Alice Lee, ‘and until your memory enables you to fix upon your real name I have chosen one for you. If you do not like it tell me, and we will choose another. Miss C—— is hard and unmeaning—I cannot call you Miss C——.’