Mr. Nott was evidently absent, and after a quick glance at the half-open cabin-door, Renshaw turned towards the galley.  But Miss Rosey was not in her accustomed haunt, and with a feeling of disappointment, which seemed inconsistent with so slight a cause, he crossed the deck impatiently and entered his room.  He was about to close the door when the prolonged rustle of a trailing skirt in the passage attracted his attention.  The sound was so unlike that made by any garment worn by Rosey that he remained motionless, with his hand on the door.  The sound approached nearer, and the next moment a white veiled figure with a trailing skirt slowly swept past the room.  Renshaw’s pulses halted for an instant in half superstitious awe.  As the apparition glided on and vanished in the cabin-door he could only see that it was the form of a beautiful and graceful woman—­but nothing more.  Bewildered and curious, he forgot himself so far as to follow it, and impulsively entered the cabin.  The figure turned, uttered a little cry, threw the veil aside, and showed the half troubled, half blushing face of Rosey.

“I—­beg—­your pardon,” stammered Renshaw; “I didn’t know it was you.”

“I was trying on some things,” said Rosey, recovering her composure and pointing to an open trunk that seemed to contain a theatrical wardrobe—­“some things father gave me long ago.  I wanted to see if there was anything I could use.  I thought I was all alone in the ship, but fancying I heard a noise forward I came out to see what it was.  I suppose it must have been you.”

She raised her clear eyes to his, with a slight touch of womanly reserve that was so incompatible with any vulgar vanity or girlish coquetry that he became the more embarrassed.  Her dress, too, of a slightly antique shape, rich but simple, seemed to reveal and accent a certain repose of gentlewomanliness, that he was now wishing to believe he had always noticed.  Conscious of a superiority in her that now seemed to change their relations completely, he alone remained silent, awkward, and embarrassed before the girl who had taken care of his room, and who cooked in the galley!  What he had thoughtlessly considered a merely vulgar business intrigue against her stupid father, now to his extravagant fancy assumed the proportions of a sacrilege to herself.

“You’ve had your revenge, Miss Nott, for the fright I once gave you,” he said a little uneasily, “for you quite startled me just now as you passed.  I began to think the Pontiac was haunted.  I thought you were a ghost.  I don’t know why such a ghost should frighten anybody,” he went on with a desperate 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.