e out in a clear
sky, and a light wind softly buffeted the cheeks, and breathed life into
nerves that the day's heat had wasted. It scarcely wrinkled the tranquil
expanse of the lake, on which loomed, far or near, a full-sailed
schooner, and presently melted into the twilight, and left the steamer
solitary upon the waters. The company was small, and not remarkable
enough in any way to take the thoughts of any one off his own comfort. A
deep sense of the coziness of the situation possessed them all which was
if possible intensified by the spectacle of the captain, seated on the
upper deck, and smoking a cigar that flashed and fainted like a
stationary fire-fly in the gathering dusk. How very distant, in this
mood, were the most recent events! Niagara seemed a fable of antiquity;
the ride from Rochester a myth of the Middle Ages. In this pool, happy
world of quiet lake, of starry skies, of air that the soul itself seemed
to breathe, there was such consciousness of repose as if one were steeped
in rest and soaked through and through with calm.

The points of likeness between Isabel and Mrs. Ellison shortly made them
mutually uninteresting, and, leaving her husband to the others, Isabel
frankly sought the companionship of Miss Kitty, in whom she found a charm
of manner which puzzled at first, but which she presently fancied must be
perfect trust of others mingling with a peculiar self-reliance.

"Can't you see, Basil, what a very flattering way it is?" she asked of
her husband, when, after parting with their friends for the night, she
tried to explain the character to him. "Of course no art could equal such
a natural gift; for that kind of belief in your good-nature and sympathy
makes you feel worthy of it, don't you know; and so you can't help being
good-natured and sympathetic. This Miss Ellison, why, I can tell you, I
shouldn't be ashamed of her anywhere." By anywhere Isabel meant Boston,
and she went on to praise the young lady's intelligence and refinement,
with those expressions of surprise at the existence of civilization in a
westerner which westerners find it so hard to receive graciously.
Happily, Miss Ellison had not to hear them. "The reason she happened to
come with only two dresses is, she lives so near Niagara that she could
come for one day, and go back the next. The colonel's her cousin, and he
and his wife go East every year, and they asked her this time to see
Niagara with them. She told me all over again