‘You must have patience. I will write cautiously and make inquiries. Of course you know many people in Bath?’
‘I have several friends there.’
‘Give me the name of a lady or gentleman to whom I may cautiously write.’
I reflected, but I could not recollect a name, and then I grew terrified, and feared that my memory was deserting me again.
‘Oh, Mrs. Lee,’ I cried, ‘I cannot remember a name. And yet I can see the people I have in my mind, in fancy. Oh, if my memory should be again deserting me!’
‘It will not matter,’ she exclaimed, with one of her gentle, reassuring smiles, ‘everything is known to me now, and, besides, are not all things material written there?’ motioning with her head towards Alice’s Bible which I had shown her, and in which she had read the particulars I had written down on the fly-leaves.
‘I have a name!’ I cried, with sudden elation: ‘General Ramsay—General William Stirling Ramsay,’ and my being able to recollect and pronounce this name in its entirety was as refreshing and comforting to me as is the inspiration of a deep and easy breath to one whose breathing has been a labour.
Mrs. Lee asked me several questions about General Ramsay; how long my husband and I had been acquainted with him; if he was a good-hearted man, likely to give himself the trouble to answer a letter; ‘because,’ said she, ‘my impatience is nearly as great as yours, and I shall want an answer by return of post.’ She then wrote down his name and the name of the street in which he lived; but I again felt frightened when I found that I could not recollect the number of his house.
Wild as I was at heart to hurry off to Bath to clasp my dear ones to my heart, to fill them with the exquisite gladness of possessing me again, I was able, after some feverish thinking and pacing about the room, to perceive the wisdom of Mrs. Lee’s counsel. So, the sun being now high and the morning advanced, for by this time it was about half-past seven o’clock, my dear friend and I went downstairs together, and, opening her desk, Mrs. Lee sat down and wrote a letter to General Ramsay.