His wife, who had already heard of me before her marriage, became the dearest of friends to me; with her I could always leave you in safety, and with her I began to feel again the solace of female society and sympathy.

She is dead, as you know, long ago, and her little daughter died at the same time, of a fever which broke out on the island two or three years after we left it.
"Two years passed after your birth, and things had gone on in much the same way.

My husband never ceased to urge me to try to obtain money from England, and in the meantime he continually took from me the little I could earn by my work, for which Mrs.Strafford found me a sale in different towns of the province.
"Do not misjudge me, Lucia.

I tell you these things only to justify what I did later, and my long concealment even from you of the truth of my history.
"But when you were about two years old your father left the island, and did not return.

The longest stay he had ever made before was a month, and when two passed, and I neither saw nor heard of him, I began to feel uneasy.