CHAPTER XXIII.

NIAGARA.

From the seaside to the mountains, from the mountains to Saratoga,
from Saratoga to Montreal, from Montreal to the Thousand Isles,
and thence they scarce knew where, the travelers wended their way,
stopping not long at any place, for Margaret was ever seeking change.
Greatly had she been admired, her pale, beautiful face attracting
attention at once; but from all flattery she turned away, saying to
Henry and Rose, "Let us go on."

So onward still they went, pausing longest at Montreal, for it was
there Arthur Carrollton had been, there a part of his possessions
lay, and there Margaret willingly lingered, even after her companions
wished to be gone.

"He may be here again," she said; and so she waited and watched,
scanning eagerly the passers-by, and noticing each new face as it
appeared at the table of the hotel where they were staying. But the
one she waited for never came. "And even if he does," she thought, "he
will not come for me."

So she signified her willingness to depart, and early one bright July
morning she left, while the singing birds from the treetops, the
summer air from the Canada hills, and, more than all, a warning voice
within her, bade her "Tarry yet a little, stay till the sun was
set," for far out in the country, and many miles away, a train was
thundering on. It would reach the city at nightfall, and among its
jaded passengers was a worn and weary man. Hopeless, almost aimless
now, he would come, and why he came he scarcely knew. "She would not
be there, so far from home," he felt sure, but he was coming for the
sake of what he hoped and feared when last he trod those streets.
Listlessly he entered the same hotel from whose windows, for five long
days, a fair young face had looked for him. Listlessly he
registered his name, then carelessly turned the leaves
backward--backward--backward still, till only one remained between his
hand and the page bearing date five days before. He paused and was
about to move away, when a sudden breeze from the open window turned
the remaining leaf, and his eye caught the name, not of Maggie Miller,
but of "Henry Warner, lady, and sister."

Thus it stood, and thus he repeated it to himself, dwelling upon the
last word "sister," as if to him it had another meaning. He had heard
from Madam Conway that neither Henry Warner nor Rose had a sister, but
she might be mistaken; probably she was; and dismissing the subject
from his