one horse. You know," she
added, "that we always intended to have two horses for going round the
mountain."

"No," said Basil, not yet used to having his decisions reached without
his knowledge. "And I don't see why we should. Everybody goes with one.
You don't suppose we're too heavy, do you?"

"I had a party from the States, ma'am, yesterday," interposed the
driver; "two ladies, real heavy apes, two gentlemen, weighin' two
hundred apiece, and a stout young man on the box with me. You'd 'a'
thought the horse was drawin' an empty carriage, the way she darted
along."

"Then his horse must be perfectly worn out to-day," said Isabel,
refusing to admit the pool fellow directly even to the honors of a
defeat. He had proved too much, and was put out of court with no hope of
repairing his error.

"Why, it seems a pity," whispered Basil, dispassionately, "to turn this
man adrift, when he had a reasonable hope of being with us all day, and
has been so civil and obliging."

"O yes, Basil, sentimentalize him, do! Why don't you sentimentalize his
helpless, overworked horse?--all in a reek of perspiration."

"Perspiration! Why, my dear, it 's the rain!"

"Well, rain or shine, darling, I don't want to go round the mountain
with one horse; and it 's very unkind of you to insist now, when you've
tacitly promised me all along to take two."

"Now, this is a little too much, Isabel. You know we never mentioned the
matter till this moment."

"It 's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't. But I don't
ask you to keep your word. I don't want to go round the mountain. I'd
much rather go to the hotel. I'm tired."

"Very well, then, Isabel, I'll leave you at the hotel."

In a moment it had come, the first serious dispute of their wedded life.
It had come as all such calamities come, from nothing, and it was on
them in full disaster ere they knew. Such a very little while ago, there
in the convent garden, their lives had been drawn closer in sympathy
than ever before; and now that blessed time seemed ages since, and
they were further asunder than those who have never been friends. "I
thought," bitterly mused Isabel, "that he would have done anything
for me." "Who could have dreamed that a woman of her sense would be
so unreasonable," he wondered. Both had tempers, as I know my dearest
reader has (if a lady), and neither would yield; and so, presently, they
could hardly tell how, for they were aghast at it all, Isabel wa