Cirrus@Austlit

An old maid's autobiography, beginning with her youth in Ireland when first her father and several years later her mother died. The boy she felt she loved in childhood disappears for several years but returns on the evening her brother and his sister become engaged. He tells the story of his years on the sea and in Australia. Over the next months the narrator realizes she loves him but he loves Alice Bowden who refuses to marry him because she is illegitimate. They are engaged but he is lost at sea and she dies in France. (PB)