. "But
it's getting late, and the air seems to be ever so much colder. Captain
Bunker says it's because we are really nearing the Californian coast. It
seems so odd! Mr. Brimmer wrote to me that it was so hot in Sacramento
that you could do something with eggs in the sun--I forget what."

"Hatch them?" suggested Miss Chubb.

"I think so," returned Mrs. Brimmer, rising. "Let us go below."

The three ladies rustled away, but Miss Keene, throwing a wrap around
her shoulders, lingered by the railing. With one little hand supporting
her round chin, she leaned over the darkly heaving water. She was
thinking of her brief and only interview with that lonely man whose name
was now in everybody's mouth, but who, until to-day, had been passed
over by them with an unconcern equal to his own. And yet to her refined
and delicately feminine taste there appeared no reason why he should not
have mingled with his fellows, and have accepted the homage from them
that SHE was instinctively ready to give. He seemed to her like a
gentleman--and something more. In her limited but joyous knowledge of
the world--a knowledge gathered in the happy school-life of an orphan
who but faintly remembered and never missed a parent's care--she knew
nothing of the mysterious dominance of passion, suffering, or experience
in fashioning the outward expression of men, and saw only that Mr.
Hurlstone was unlike any other. That unlikeness was fascinating. He had
said very little to her in that very brief period. He had not talked
to her with the general gallantry which she already knew her prettiness
elicited. Without knowing why, she felt there was a subtle flattery in
his tacit recognition of that other self of which she, as yet, knew so
little. She could not remember what they had talked about--nor why. Nor
was she offended that he had never spoken to her since, nor gone beyond
a grave lifting of his hat to her when he passed.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE FOG.

By noon of the following day the coast of the Peninsula of California
had been sighted to leeward. The lower temperature of the northwest
Trades had driven Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb into their state-rooms to
consult their wardrobes in view of an impending change from the light
muslins and easy languid toilets of the Tropics. That momentous question
for the moment held all other topics in abeyance; and even Mrs. Markham
and Miss Keene, though they still kept the deck, in shawls and wraps,
sigh