me, he
imperiously, as one may say, surveyed the landscape. As the imposing
apparition grew upon Isa-bel, "O here," she thought, "is something truly
distinguished. Of course, dear," she added aloud to Basil, "he's some
foreign nobleman travelling here"; and she ran over in her mind the
newspaper announcements of patrician visitors from abroad and tried to
identify him with some one of them. The cross must be the decoration of a
foreign order, and Basil suggested that he was perhaps a member of some
legation at Washington, who had ran up there for his summer vacation. The
cross puzzled him, but the double-headed eagle, he said, meant either
Austria or Russia; probably Austria, for the wearer looked a trifle too
civilized for a Russian.

"Yes, indeed! What an air he has. Never tell me. Basil, that there's
nothing in blood!" cried Isabel, who was a bitter aristocrat at heart,
like all her sex, though in principle she was democratic enough. As she
spoke, the object of her regard looked about him on the different groups,
not with pride, not with hauteur, but with a glance of unconscious,
unmistakable superiority. "O, that stare!" she added; nothing but high
birth and long descent can give it! Dearest, he's becoming a great
affliction to me. I want to know who he is. Couldn't you invent some
pretext for speaking to him?"

"No, I couldn't do it decently; and no doubt he'd snub me as I deserved
if I intruded upon him. Let's wait for fortune to reveal him."

"Well, I suppose I must, but it's dreadful; it's really dreadful. You can
easily see that's distinction," she continued, as her hero moved about
the promenade and gently but loftily made a way for himself among the
other passengers and favored the scenery through his opera-glass from one
point and another. He spoke to no one, and she reasonably supposed that
he did not know English.

In the mean time it was drawing near the hour of dinner, but no dinner
appeared. Twelve, one, two came and went, and then at last came the
dinner, which had been delayed, it seemed, till the cook could recruit
his energies sufficiently to meet the wants of double the number he had
expected to provide for. It was observable of the officers and crew of
the Banshee, that while they did not hold themselves aloof from the
passengers in the disdainful American manner, they were of feeble mind,
and not only did everything very slowly (in the usual Canadian fashion),
but with an inefficiency that am