It was at this moment of their success, that accident threw in their way a girl who was evidently well-born and susceptible, and whom a few inquiries proved to be an heiress.  At first, Bailey had had some thought of himself winning this prize; but he had wit enough to see that he would not succeed, and that Christian might, which would be equally to his advantage.  Christian cared little about it, but he let Bailey guide him, and so the prey fell into their hands.

So far, the story told had been intensely personal, and of the kind which must inevitably be coloured by the teller.  From this point, Mrs. Costello was no longer leading her daughter through places and scenes entirely strange.  She paused, and faltered, yet began again with a sense of having surmounted her greatest difficulties, and from hence is perhaps the best narrator of her own life.

“When I found out,” she went on, “how different the reality was from my dreams, I took no care to hide, either from Bailey or my husband, the horror I began to feel for them both.  Christian took my reproaches carelessly—­his education had not prevented him from regarding women as other Indians do—­to him I was merely his squaw, the chief and most useful of his possessions, and it made no difference to him whether I was contented with my position or not.  But Bailey was not quite so insensible; and when I spoke to him with the same bitterness as to my husband, he retorted, and took trouble to show me how my own folly had been as much to blame as their schemes, in drawing me into such a marriage.  He explained to me precisely how, and why, I had been entrapped, and made me perceive that I was utterly helpless in their hands.  There came, about the middle of our voyage, a time when I sunk into a kind of stupor; worn out with the misery of my disappointment, I gave up my whole mind to a gloomy passiveness.  Morning after morning I crept out on deck, and sat all day leaning against the bulwarks, with a cloak drawn round me, seeing nothing but the waves and sky, and indifferent to wind or rain, or the hot sun which sometimes shone on me.  All this time I had taken no notice of the Indians, who for their part avoided me, and left me a portion of the deck always undisturbed.  But one day as I sat as usual vacantly looking out to sea, I was disturbed by the cries of a child.  The babies, although there were four or five in the party, were usually so quiet that the sound surprised me.  I looked round, and saw the women gathered together in a group, consulting over the child, which still cried as if in violent pain.  At last I got up, and went to the place, where I found that the poor little creature, a girl of about a year old, had fallen down a hatchway and broken her arm.  She had lost her mother in England, and was in the care of an elder sister, who hung over her in the greatest distress, while the other women were preparing to bandage the arm.  I had had no idea till then how wretchedly these poor creatures were huddled together, without even such comforts as they were used to; but when I found that it was impossible for the sick child to be cared for in the miserable place where they lived, I began to come to myself a little, or rather to forget myself, and contrive something to help others.