loser to him, and looked at him in a way that
threatened betrayal of her bridal character.

"Isabel, you will be having your head on my shoulder, next," said he.

"Never!" she answered fiercely, recovering her distance with a start.
"But, dearest, if you do see me going to--act absurdly, you know, do
stop me."

"I'm very sorry, but I've got myself to stop. Besides, I didn't
undertake to preserve the incognito of this bridal party."

If any accident of the sort dreaded had really happened, it would not
have mattered so much, for as yet they were the sole occupants of the
waiting room. To be sure, the ticket-seller was there, and the lady who
checked packages left in her charge, but these must have seen so many
endearments pass between passengers,--that a fleeting caress or so would
scarcely have drawn their notice to our pair. Yet Isabel did not so much
even as put her hand into her husband's; and as Basil afterwards said,
it was very good practice.

Our temporary state, whatever it is, is often mirrored in all that come
near us, and our friends were fated to meet frequent parodies of their
happiness from first to last on this journey. The travesty began with
the very first people who entered the waiting-room after themselves, and
who were a very young couple starting like themselves upon a pleasure
tour, which also was evidently one of the first tours of any kind that
they had made. It was of modest extent, and comprised going to New York
and back; but they talked of it with a fluttered and joyful expectation
as if it were a voyage to Europe. Presently there appeared a burlesque
of their happiness (but with a touch of tragedy) in that kind of young
man who is called by the females of his class a fellow, and two young
women of that kind known to him as girls. He took a place between these,
and presently began a robust flirtation with one of them. He possessed
himself, after a brief struggle, of her parasol, and twirled it about,
as he uttered, with a sort of tender rudeness inconceivable vapidities,
such as you would expect from none but a man of the highest fashion. The
girl thus courted became selfishly unconscious of everything but her own
joy, and made no attempt to bring the other girl within its warmth, but
left her to languish forgotten on the other side. The latter sometimes
leaned forward, and tried to divert a little of the flirtation to
herself, but the flirters snubbed her with short answers, and presentl