new
that nothing could take away what I possessed, because it was treasured
in my own heart; but now I cannot help feeling anxious on your account--
exposed to numberless dangers as you are, and must be, in the horrid
work such as I understand this ship is to be engaged in. When that
dreadful woman insisted on my accompanying her, I understood that the
ship was to make an ordinary voyage, visiting interesting lands, trading
with the natives, and catching whales. Had I known the truth I would
have resisted her authority, and gone out as a governess or into service
as a nursery-maid, or done anything rather than have come on board. But
left an orphan and penniless, and under her guardianship, so she
asserted, I thought it my duty to obey her. I do not regret it now,"
she added, quickly; "but I felt that you must have been surprised at
finding me dependent on such a person as Mrs Podgers. I have never
told you my history--I will do so. When, about ten years ago, my dear
mother was dying, just as I was six years old, this woman was her nurse,
and pretended to be warmly attached to her. My father, Lieutenant
Raglan, having married against the wishes of his family, they,
considering that my mother, though highly educated and attractive, was
inferior to him in birth and fortune, cast him off, and refused to hold
any further communication with him. Just before the time I speak of, he
sailed for the East India station, and my dear mother being left at a
distance from her own friends, who resided in the West Indies, she had
no one of her own station, when her fatal illness attacked her, to whom
she could confide me. When, therefore, her nurse promised to watch over
me with the tenderest care, and to see that I was educated in a way
suitable to my father's position in society, and to restore me to him as
soon as he returned, she thankfully left me and all the property she
possessed under her charge. Such is what her nurse, now Mrs Podgers,
has always asserted. Providentially, my mother had written to a lady,
Mrs Henley, at whose school she herself had been educated, saying, that
it was her express wish that I should be under her charge until I was
sixteen, although I was to spend my holidays with nurse till my father's
return. I suspect, that at the last, my poor mother had some doubts
about leaving so much in the power of a woman of inferior education; and
I remember seeing her write a paper, which she got the respectab