"I do really think he is reviving, Jack," said Rose, "and that you may yet hope to have an intelligent conversation with him."
"They all agree he _must_ die," answered Jack Tier--for it was _he_, appearing in the garb of his proper sex, after a disguise that had now lasted fully twenty years--"and he will never know who I am, and that I forgive him. He must think of me in another world, though he isn't able to do it in this; but it would be a great relief to his soul to know that I forgive him."
"To be sure, a man must like to take a kind leave of his own wife before he closes his eyes forever; and I dare say it would be a great relief to you to tell him that you have forgotten his desertion of you, and all the hardships it has brought upon you in searching for him, and in earning your own livelihood as a common sailor."
"I shall not tell him I've _forgotten_ it, Miss Rose; that would be untrue--and there shall be no more deception between us; but I shall tell him that I _forgive_ him, as I hope God will one day forgive me all _my_ sins."
"It is, certainly, not a light offence to desert a wife in a foreign land, and then to seek to deceive another woman," quietly observed Rose.
"He's a willian!" muttered the wife--"but--but--"
"You forgive him, Jack--yes, I'm sure you do. You are too good a Christian to refuse to forgive him."
"I'm a woman a'ter all, Miss Rose; and that, I believe, is the truth of it. I suppose I ought to do as you say, for the reason you mention; but I'm his wife--and once he loved me, though that has long been over. When I first knew Stephen, I'd the sort of feelin's you speak of, and was a very different creatur' from what you see me to-day. Change comes over us all with years and sufferin'."
Rose did not answer, but she stood looking intently at the speaker more than a minute. Change had, indeed, come over her, if she had ever possessed the power to please the fancy of any living man. Her features had always seemed diminitive and mean for her assumed sex, as her voice was small and cracked; but, making every allowance for the probabilities, Rose found it difficult to imagine that Jack Tier had ever possessed, even under the high advantages of youth and innocence, the attractions so common to her sex. Her skin had acquired the tanning of the sea; the expression of her face had become hard and worldly; and her habits contributed to render those natural consequences of exposure and toil even more than usually marked and decided. By saying "habits," however, we do not mean that Jack had ever drank to excess, as happens with so many seamen, for this would have been doing her injustice, but she smoked and chewed--practices that intoxicate in another form, and lead nearly as many to the grave as excess in drinking. Thus all the accessories about this singular being, partook of the character of her recent life and duties. Her walk was between a waddle and a seaman's roll; her hands were discolored with tar, and had got to be full of knuckles, and even her feet had degenerated into that flat, broad-toed form that, perhaps, sooner distinguishes caste, in connection with outward appearances, than any one other physical peculiarity. Yet this being _had_ once been young--had once been even _fair_; and had once possessed that feminine air and lightness of form, that as often belongs to the youthful American of her sex, perhaps, as to the girl of any other nation on earth. Rose continued to gaze at her companion for some time, when she walked musingly to a window that looked out upon the port.