Alone on a Wide Sea, Volume III

Three days must now certainly pass before I could receive news of my husband, sister, and children. I call the time three days, but I might have to wait very much longer than that, for how could I tell that General Ramsay still lived at Bath? And, supposing him to be living there, could I be sure that he would promptly answer Mrs. Lee's letter? So that, if we did not hear from him presently, Mrs. Lee must apply to some others of the friends I had named to her. This I was resolved not to consent to. Expectation, uncertainty, the passionate yearning of the mother and wife worked in my mind in a torment that delay would render insupportable, and I made up my mind that if General Ramsay did not answer Mrs. Lee's letter within four days of the time of her writing to him I would deafen my ears to every possible objection that Mrs. Lee might make, and go myself to Bath.

I was too agitated, too expectant to leave the house. I wandered from room to room. I could not sit for five minutes at a time. The marvellous recovery of my memory, all in a moment as it might seem, did undoubtedly make me light headed during that first day, and Mrs. Lee would often eye me anxiously. I could think of nothing but my husband and children and my sister. Were they well? Suppose one of my precious ones had died during the long three years I had been missing! Suppose my husband were dead! Suppose they had broken up their home at Bath and had gone away, as Mrs. Lee had suggested, and there should be no one to tell me where they had gone, so that it might end in my knowing myself to be a wife and mother and not knowing where to find my husband and children!