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----.’
‘For your Christian name,’ she answered, ‘I have chosen Agnes. It is a pretty name.’
‘It is Alice’s favourite name,’ said Mrs. Lee.
I repeated the word Agnes, but no name, not the strangest that was to have been suggested, could have been more barren to my imagination.
‘If Sir Frederick Thompson is to be believed,’ said Mrs. Lee, ‘you undoubtedly belong to the Calthorpe family, whoever they may be, for I am sorry to say I never before heard of them.’
‘Does he continue to say that I am a Calthorpe?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ she answered; ‘he offers to wager any sum of money that you will prove to be a Calthorpe.’
‘I am sure he is mistaken,’ said Miss Lee. ‘How would it be possible for him to recognise a likeness in you when your face was almost concealed by a bandage? And besides, is it not certain that the terrible sufferings you have undergone have greatly changed the character of your face? You may resemble the Calthorpe family now, but you could not have resembled them before your sufferings altered you, and therefore Sir Frederick Thompson must be mistaken.’