nchorless, unsupported mind had again
leisure for a brief repose. Till the "Vivid" arrived in harbour, no
further action would be required of me; but then.... Oh! I could not
look forward. Harassed, exhausted, I lay in a half-trance.

The stewardess talked all night; not to me but to the young steward,
her son and her very picture. He passed in and out of the cabin
continually: they disputed, they quarrelled, they made it up again
twenty times in the course of the night. She professed to be writing a
letter home--she said to her father; she read passages of it aloud,
heeding me no more than a stock--perhaps she believed me asleep.
Several of these passages appeared to comprise family secrets, and bore
special reference to one "Charlotte," a younger sister who, from the
bearing of the epistle, seemed to be on the brink of perpetrating a
romantic and imprudent match; loud was the protest of this elder lady
against the distasteful union. The dutiful son laughed his mother's
correspondence to scorn. She defended it, and raved at him. They were a
strange pair. She might be thirty-nine or forty, and was buxom and
blooming as a girl of twenty. Hard, loud, vain and vulgar, her mind and
body alike seemed brazen and imperishable. I should think, from her
childhood, she must have lived in public stations; and in her youth
might very likely have been a barmaid.

Towards morning her discourse ran on a new theme: "the Watsons," a
certain expected family-party of passengers, known to her, it appeared,
and by her much esteemed on account of the handsome profit realized in
their fees. She said, "It was as good as a little fortune to her
whenever this family crossed."

At dawn all were astir, and by sunrise the passengers came on board.
Boisterous was the welcome given by the stewardess to the "Watsons,"
and great was the bustle made in their honour. They were four in
number, two males and two females. Besides them, there was but one
other passenger--a young lady, whom a gentlemanly, though
languid-looking man escorted. The two groups offered a marked contrast.
The Watsons were doubtless rich people, for they had the confidence of
conscious wealth in their bearing; the women--youthful both of them,
and one perfectly handsome, as far as physical beauty went--were
dressed richly, gaily, and absurdly out of character for the
circumstances. Their bonnets with bright flowers, their velvet cloaks
and silk dresses, seemed better suited for p