“Perhaps I can help you. I’ll try.”
Poor little Miss Smith had no objection to his trying. She went below to her cabin, changed into dry clothes from her suit case, and rested. She did everything that Mr. Powers had suggested, and one thing that he had not suggested—which was to shed a few tears, for it was a very distressing situation.
A little after four o’clock she descended to the dining saloon for a cup of tea, and to see Mr. Powers, who was to meet her there and give her his news of the lost Pattersons. She had felt sure that Mr. Powers would be there waiting for her, and he was; yet Miss Smith gave a start at the sight of him.
This benevolent stranger who had so kindly offered to help her was not the bespectacled, middle-aged stranger he ought to have been, but a remarkably good-looking young man. Though he was neatly and quietly dressed, and in no way conspicuous, either in appearance or manner, yet there was something in the nonchalant grace of his tall body, in the expression of his dark, keen face, that was unmistakably—romantic. She felt it, she knew it. As she came toward him, her own expression changed, and she became every inch a governess.
It seemed to be part of Mr. Powers’s mental equipment, however, to judge pretty shrewdly what other people were feeling. He spoke to Miss Smith in quite an impersonal tone.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that the people you’re with aren’t with you. It appears that neither they nor their luggage ever came aboard.”
“Oh!” cried Miss Smith. “But they must have come! They had their tickets, and I left them on the pier, with all their trunks and bags. Oh, can I possibly have got on the wrong ship?”
“No,” said he. “Your name’s on the passenger list, and so are their names; but they’re not aboard.”
“But where are they? They couldn’t have—have fallen overboard?”
“Well,” said Mr. Powers thoughtfully, “three of them together would make quite a splash. I imagine some one would have noticed it.”