The wifehood of Jessica.

Returning as a middle-aging widow, after an unhappy wifehood in Africa, she meets on the boat two persons, Captain Brangwyn, a young man, and a girl-mother calling herself Antonina Pisa.

He did not love Olivia the less, for maternity had crowned her wifehood with an added glory; but side by side with this old and tried attachment was a new passion, stirring up dormant hopes and kindling new desires.