amidst their lovely multitude; but this episode of
modern history is difficult for the imagination to manage, and somehow
one does not take sentimentally even to that daughter of a lurking
patriot, who long baffled her father's pursuers by rowing him from one
island to another, and supplying him with food by night.

Either the reluctance is from the natural desire that so recent a heroine
should be founded on fact, or it is mere perverseness. Perhaps I ought to
say; in justice to her, that it was one of her own sex who refused to be
interested in her, and forbade Basil to care for her. When he had read of
her exploit from the guide-book, Isabel asked him if he had noticed that
handsome girl in the blue and white striped Garibaldi and Swiss hat, who
had come aboard at Kingston. She pointed her out, and courageously made
him admire her beauty, which was of the most bewitching Canadian type.
The young girl was redeemed by her New World birth from the English
heaviness; a more delicate bloom lighted her cheeks; a softer grace dwelt
in her movement; yet she was round and full, and she was in the perfect
flower of youth. She was not so ethereal in her loveliness as an American
girl, but she was not so nervous and had none of the painful fragility of
the latter. Her expression was just a little vacant, it must be owned;
but so far as she went she was faultless. She looked like the most
tractable of daughters, and as if she would be the most obedient of
wives. She had a blameless taste in dress, Isabel declared; her costume
of blue and white striped Garibaldi and Swiss hat (set upon heavy masses
of dark brown hair) being completed by a black silk skirt. "And you can
see," she added, "that it's an old skirt made over, and that she's
dressed as cheaply as she is prettily." This surprised Basil, who had
imputed the young lady's personal sumptuousness to her dress, and had
thought it enormously rich. When she got off with her chaperone at one of
the poorest-looking country landings, she left them in hopeless
conjecture about her. Was she visiting there, or was the interior of
Canada full of such stylish and exquisite creatures? Where did she get
her taste, her fashions, her manners? As she passed from sight towards
the shadow of the woods, they felt the poorer for her going; yet they
were glad to have seen her, and on second thoughts they felt that they
could not justly ask more of her than to have merely existed for a few
hours in