“I think,” he went on hesitatingly, “that he had dark, pleasant eyes, a thick beard, and the look of a sailor.”

“And there were no other papers in the portmanteau?” she said, with the same intense look.

“None.”

“These are mere coincidences,” said Miss Avondale, after a pause, “and, after all, they are not as strange as the alternative.  For we would have to believe that Captain Dornton arrived here—­where he knew his son and I were living—­without a word of warning, came ashore for the purpose of going to a hotel and the bank also, and then unaccountably changed his mind and disappeared.”

The thought of the rotten wharf, his own escape, and the dead body were all in Randolph’s mind; but his reasoning was already staggered by the girl’s conclusions, and he felt that it might only pain, without convincing her.  And was he convinced himself?  She smiled at his blank face and rose.  “Thank you all the same.  And now I must go.”

Randolph rose also.  “Would you like to take the photograph and letter to show your cousin?”

“Yes.  But I should not place much reliance on his memory.”  Nevertheless, she took up the photograph and letter, and Randolph, putting the portmanteau back in the closet, locked it, and stood ready to accompany her.

On their way to her house they talked of other things.  Randolph learned something of her life in Callao:  that she was an orphan like himself, and had been brought from the Eastern States when a child to live with a rich uncle in Callao who was childless; that her aunt had died and her uncle had married again; that the second wife had been at variance with his family, and that it was consequently some relief to Miss Avondale to be independent as the guardian of Bobby, whose mother was a sister of the first wife; that her uncle had objected as strongly as a brother-in-law could to his wife’s sister’s marriage with Captain Dornton on account of his roving life and unsettled habits, and that consequently there would be little sympathy for her or for Bobby in his mysterious disappearance.  The wind blew and the rain fell upon these confidences, yet Randolph, walking again under that umbrella of felicity, parted with her at her own doorstep all too soon, although consoled with the permission to come and see her when the child returned.

He went back to his room a very hopeful, foolish, but happy youth.  As he entered he seemed to feel the charm of her presence again in the humble apartment she had sanctified.  The furniture she had moved with her own little hands, the bed on which she had sat for a half moment, was glorified to his youthful fancy.  And even that magic portmanteau which had brought him all this happiness, that, too,—­but he gave a sudden start.  The closet door, which he had shut as he went out, was unlocked and open, the portmanteau—­his “trust”—­gone!

III