d 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 was alone in her room amidst
the ruins of her life, and Basil alone in the one-horse carriage, trying
to drive away from the wreck of his happiness. All was over; the dream
was past; the charm was broken. The sweetness of their love was turned to
gall; whatever had pleased them in their loving moods was loat