Sometimes, in her isolation, the long, cylindrical
vault she inhabited seemed, like some vast sea-shell, to become musical
with the murmurings of the distant sea. So completely had it taken the
place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had forgotten
she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in fashion and scant in
quantity. After the first surprise of admiration her father's lodgers
ceased to follow the abstracted nymph except with their eyes,--partly
respecting her spiritual shyness, partly respecting the jealous
supervision of the paternal Nott. She seldom penetrated the crowded
center of the growing city; her rare excursions were confined to the
old ranch at Petaluma, whence she brought flowers and plants, and even
extemporized a hanging-garden on the quarter-deck.
It was still raining, and the wind, which had increased to a gale, was
dashing the drops against the slanting cabin windows with a sound like
spray when Mr. Abner Nott sat before a table seriously engaged with his
accounts. For it was "steamer night,"--as that momentous day of
reckoning before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly
known to commercial San Francisco,--and Mr.
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