profound hushes between, and then more jubilant
jangling, and then deeper silence; there was the devout trooping of
the crowds to the churches; and there was the beginning of the long
afternoon's lounging and amusement with which the people of that faith
reward their morning's devotion. Little stands for the sale of knotty
apples and choke-cherries and cakes and cider sprang magically into
existence after service, and people were already eating and drinking at
them. The carriage-drivers resumed their chase of the tourists, and the
unvoiceful stir of the new week had begun again. Quebec, in fact, is but
a pantomimic reproduction of France; it is as if two centuries in a new
land, amidst the primeval silences of nature and the long hush of the
Northern winters, had stilled the tongues of the lively folk and made
them taciturn as we of a graver race. They have kept the ancestral
vivacity of manner; the elegance of the shrug is intact; the talking
hands take part in dialogue; the agitated person will have its share of
expression. But the loud and eager tone is wanting, and their dumb show
mystifies the beholder almost as much as the Southern architecture under
the slanting Northern sun. It is not America; if it is not France, what
is it?

Of the many beautiful things to see in the neighborhood of Quebec, our
wedding-journeyers were in doubt on which to bestow their one precious
afternoon. Should it be Lorette, with its cataract and its remnant of
bleached and fading Hurons, or the Isle of Orleans with its fertile
farms and its primitive peasant life, or Montmorenci, with the unrivaled
fall and the long drive through the beautiful village of Beauport?
Isabel chose the last, because Basil had been there before, and it had
to it the poetry of the wasted years in which she did not know him. She
had possessed herself of the journal of his early travels, among the
other portions and parcels recoverable from the dreadful past, and from
time to time on this journey she had read him passages out of it, with
mingled sentiment and irony, and, whether she was mocking or admiring,
equally to his confusion. Now, as they smoothly bowled away from the
city, she made him listen to what he had written of the same excursion
long ago.

It was, to be sure, a sad farrago of sentiment about the village and the
rural sights, and especially a girl tossing hay in the field. Yet it
had touches of nature and reality, and Basil could not utterly despi