‘I am very glad there is not a baby in the saloon,’ exclaimed Mrs. Webber. ‘I did not know there was such a thing in the ship—I mean in this part of it.’
‘Have you any children?’ said I, recalling my wandering mind with difficulty.
‘I am thankful to say I have not. It is enough to have a husband. My hubby is very good, but even he does not permit me to enjoy that perfect leisure of retirement which literature demands. He is constantly looking in upon me at the wrong moment. Thought is a spider’s web, and the least interruption is like passing your finger through it. But how would it be with me if I had children? So this is your cabin? Well, it is not so gloomy as I had feared to find it,’ and seating herself she restlessly turned her eyes about; but there was little enough for her to look at, and nothing whatever to inspire her.
However, she was in my berth, and I was her companion, and she was resolved not to lose an opportunity she had been on the lookout for, and so she began to tell me what she considered to have been my past.
‘You are not,’ said she, ‘a member of the noble family that Sir Frederick Thompson talks of. I am sure I cannot tell who you are, but you are not a Calthorpe. It is very wonderful, and I was almost going to say delightful, to meet with so impenetrable a mystery as you in the flesh. It is not as though your past and your name were your secret. You are as great a mystery to yourself as to everybody else, and there is something awful and beautiful to my mind in such a thing. No, you will find that you are the daughter of a country gentleman, who is not very rich—pray excuse me! one never knows what ideas may be of service: your being without jewellery makes me suppose that your people live quietly somewhere; unless, indeed,’ she continued, looking at my hands and at my ears and throat, ‘you were robbed. But that we need not believe. I am not going to tell you how you came to be in an open boat. No, if Captain Ladmore cannot understand that, how should I? Does it not help you a little to hear you are the daughter a plain country gentleman?’
I answered not, gazing at her earnestly, and straining my mind that I might closely follow her words.
‘I have settled,’ she went on, ‘and the Miss Glanvilles are of my opinion, that you were pretty before you met with your accident, whatever it may have been, that turned your hair white and aged and mutilated your poor face. You have a sweet mouth. I envy you your teeth, and your eyes are wonderfully fine, and depend upon it you had a very great deal of hair before it came out. Do I seem to suggest even a faint fancy?’
‘None whatever,’ said I, still with my mind on the strain, and still gazing at her eagerly.
‘Your age is about thirty,’ said she. ‘When you first came on board you looked about forty. Now you might pass for six-and-thirty. How delightful to be able to reverse the old-fashioned process! Ten years hence you will be ten years younger, and I shall be ten years older. But your real age—your age as you there sit—is from thirty to thirty-two.’
She dropped her head on one side in a posture of enquiry. I gazed at her in silence.