"Of course, I can't see you very well," Ada said, "but I should not
have known you, in the least."
"No, I am got up like a peasant," Charlie answered. "We shall have to
dress you so, before morning. We have got things here for you."
"Oh, how delighted I was," Ada exclaimed, "when I got your note! I
found it so difficult to keep on looking sad and hopeless, when I
could have sung for joy. I had been so miserable. There seemed no
hope, and they said, some day, I should be sent to the nabob's
zenana--wretches! How poor mamma will be grieving for me, and papa!--
"Ah! Captain Marryat, he is dead, is he not?"
"Yes, my dear," Charlie said gently. "He was killed by my side, that
afternoon. With his last breath, he asked me to take care of you."
"I thought so," Ada said, crying quietly. "I did not think of it at
the time. Everything was so strange, and so dreadful, that I scarcely
thought at all. But afterwards, on the way here, when I turned it all
over, it seemed to me that it must be so. He did not come to me, all
that afternoon. He was not shut up with us in that dreadful place, and
everyone else was there. So it seemed to me that he must have been
killed, but that you did not like to tell me.
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