erate attempt to recover his position by gallantry.
"Let me see--that's Donna Elvira's dress--is it not?"

"I don't think that was the poor woman's name," said Rosey simply; "she
died of yellow fever at New Orleans as Signora somebody."

Her ignorance seemed to Mr. Renshaw so plainly to partake more of the
nun than the provincial that he hesitated to explain to her that he
meant the heroine of an opera.

"It seems dreadful to put on the poor thing's clothes, doesn't it?" she
added.

Mr. Renshaw's eyes showed so plainly that he thought otherwise, that
she drew a little austerely towards the door of her state-room.

"I must change these things before any one comes," she said dryly.

"That means I must go, I suppose. But couldn't you let me wait here or
in the gangway until then, Miss Nott? I am going away to-night, and I
mayn't see you again." He had not intended to say this, but it slipped
from his embarrassed tongue. She stopped with her hand on the door.

"You are going away?"

"I--think--I must leave to-night. I have some important business in
Sacramento."

She raised her frank eyes to his. The unmistakable look of
disappointment that he saw in them gave his heart a sudden throb and
sent the quick blood to his cheeks.

"It's too bad," she said, abstractedly. "Nobody ever seems to stay
here long. Captain Bower promised to tell me all about the ship and he
went away the second week. The photographer left before he finished
the picture of the Pontiac; Monsieur de Ferrieres has only just gone,
and now YOU are going."

"Perhaps, unlike them, I have finished my season of usefulness here,"
he replied, with a bitterness he would have recalled the next moment.
But Rosey, with a faint sigh, saying, "I won't be long," entered the
state-room and closed the door behind her.

Renshaw bit his lip and pulled at the long silken threads of his
moustache until they smarted. Why had he not gone at once? Why was it
necessary to say he might not see her again--and if he had said it, why
should he add anything more? What was he waiting for now? To endeavor
to prove to her that he really bore no resemblance to Captain Bower,
the photographer, the crazy Frenchman de Ferrieres? Or would he be
forced to tell her that he was running away from a conspiracy to
defraud her father--merely for something to say? Was there ever such
folly? Rosey was "not long," as she had said, but he was beginning to
pace the narrow cabi