em. "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 what
we eavesdropped so shamefully in the hotel parlor;--and I don't know
whether she was better pleased with the prospect of what's before her,
or with the notion of making the journey in this original way. She
didn't force her confidence upon me, any more than she tried to withhold
it. We got to talking in the most natural manner; and she seemed to tell
these things about herself because they amused her and she liked me. I
had been saying how my trunk got left behind once on the French side of
Mont Cenis, and I had to wear aunt's things at Turin till it could be
sent for."

"Well, I don't see but Miss Ellison could describe you to her friends
very much as you've described her to me," said Basil. "How did these
mutual confidences begin? Whose trustfulness first flattered the
other's? What else did you tell about yourself?"

"I said we were on our wedding journey," guiltily admitted Isabel.

"O, you did!"

"Why, dearest! I wanted to know, for once, you see, whether we seemed
honeymoon-struck."

"And do we?"

"No," came the answer, somewhat ruefully. "Perhaps, Basil," she added,
"we've been a little too successful in disguising our bridal character.
Do you know," she continued, looking him anxiously in the face, "this
Miss Ellison took me at first for--your sister!"

Basil broke forth in outrageous laughter. "One more such victory," he
said, "and we are undone;" and he laughed again, immoderately. "How sad
is the fruition of human wishes! There 's nothing, after all, like a
good thorough failure for making people happy."

Isabel did not listen to him. Safe in a dim corner of the deserted
saloon, she seized him in a vindictive embrace; then, as if it had been
he who suggested the idea of such a loathsome relation, hissed out the
hated words, "Your sister!" and released him with a disdainful repulse.

A little after daybreak the steamer stopped at the Canadian city of
Kingston, a handsome place, substantial to the water's edge, and giving
a sense of English solidity by the stone of which it is largely built.
There was an accession of many passengers here, and they and the people
on the wharf were as little like Americans as p