ur through the country, which
they all enjoyed, after which Sir Robert asked Miss Noel whether she
would be willing to take Ethel back to Niagara and wait there a
fortnight, or perhaps a little longer, while he and Mr. Heathcote came
back by way of New England and from there went down into Maryland and
Virginia, where, according to "a member of the Canadian Parliament,"
lands were to be had for a song.

"A fortnight? I could spend a twelve-month there," exclaimed she. "Had
it not been that I was ashamed to insist upon being let off this
journey, I should have stopped there as it was."

To Niagara the aunt and niece and Parsons went, as agreed, and there
they found Mr. Bates wandering languidly about the place in chronic
discontent with everything for not being something else. He had burned a
good deal of incense on Ethel's shrine when she was at Kalsing, and now
hailed their advent with some approach to enthusiasm, and attached
himself to their suite, _vice_ Captain Kendall, retired. He liked to be
seen with them, thought the views from the Canadian side were "deucedly
fine," was cruelly affected by the advertisements in the neighborhood,
which he denounced as "dreadfully American," trickled out much feeble
criticism of and acid comment on his surroundings, gave utterance to
fervent wishes that he was "abrard," and in his own unpleasant way gave
Ethel to understand that she might make a fellow-countryman happy by
becoming Mrs. Samuel Bates if she liked to avail herself of a golden
opportunity. "I would live in England, you know. I am really far more at
home there than here," said the expatriated suitor. "I have been taken
for an Englishman as often as three times in one week, do you know.
Curious, isn't it? I ought to be down in Kent now, visiting Lady
Simpson, a great friend of mine, who has asked me there again and again.
You would like her if you knew her. She is quite the great lady down
there."

"A foolish little man, and evidently a great snob, or else rather daft
upon some points," Ethel reported to her aunt. "And such a dull,
discontented creature, with all his money!" Ethel had some trials of her
own just then, and it was no great felicity to listen to Mr. Bates's
endless complaints, nor could she spare much sympathy for the sufferings
of the exile of Tecumseh, with his rose-leaf sensibilities, inanities,
absurdities.

Meanwhile, the young gentleman who was indirectly responsible for many a
sad thought of