“I thought you knew all about your destination by this time,” replied Lady Anastasia Raymond.  “Yes, yes, New York of course!” and again she laughed.  “Didn’t you hear Clayton say so?”

Just then a sharp tap at the door was answered by Lady Anastasia, who went quickly from beneath the curtain hung across it (in consideration, no doubt, of the privacy my illness enjoined), but not before I had caught once, and this time clearly, the tones of a voice that thrilled to my life, the same that had haunted my delirious fancy, I now remembered, through the last four-and-twenty hours.

I rose to my elbow impulsively, only to fall back again utterly exhausted.

“Who was that speaking?” I asked, feebly; “can it be possible—­” and I wrung my hands.

“It was the ship’s doctor,” interrupted the woman I had heard called Clayton by her mistress.  “He had not time to do more than inquire about you, I suppose, there are so many ill in the steerage; but he has been very kind and will probably return.”

“I hope so,” I rejoined; “I should like to realize that voice as his.  It has haunted me very disagreeably in my dreams, and the tones are those of an old, old acquaintance, one I should be sorry to see here.”

“I do not believe you have an acquaintance on the ship,” she said, simply, “Under the circumstances any such person would certainly have discovered himself; your situation would have moved a heart of stone.”

“But it is sometimes wise for the wicked to lie perdu,” I murmured, and conjecture was busy in my brain.  “I should be glad, too, to see the captain of this vessel at his earliest convenience,” I added, after a pause.

“Will you be so good as to apprise him in person of my earnest wish?  It would be a real charity.”

“Oh, certainly; but I am afraid he cannot come to-night.  It is nearly evening now, and he never leaves the deck at this hour, nor until very late.”

“To-morrow, then, I must insist on this interview, since I reflect about it for several reasons.”

“To-morrow he shall come,” she said, sententiously; “and now try and sleep again.  It is very necessary you should gather strength, for we shall be in port shortly, when all will be confusion.”

I went to sleep, I remember, murmuring to myself:  “The hands were the hands of Jacob, but the voice was the voice of Esau;” and my bewildered faculties found rest until the morning’s dawn.

After a hasty toilet made by the careful hands of Mrs. Clayton, a matutinal visit made by Mrs. or Lady Raymond, who always rose early as she informed me, and a cup of tea, very soothing to my prostrated nerves, the potentate of the Latona was duly announced.

Our ship’s master was a tall, gaunt, sandy-haired man, with steady gray eyes, hard features, and enormous hands and feet, the first freckled and awkward, the last so long as very nearly to span the space between his seat (a small Spanish-leather trunk) and the berth I reposed in.  He entered without his hat; and the swoop of the head he made to avoid the entanglement of the curtain was supposed to do double duty, and serve as a bow to the inmate of his state-room as well, for his I supposed it to be at the time, and he did not contradict me.