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 possible. They were English
or Irish or Scotch, with the healthful bloom of the Old World still upon
their faces, or if Canadians they looked not less hearty; so that one
must wonder if the line between the Dominion and the United States did
not also sharply separate good digestion and dyspep