essed, and ravishing toilets take the willing eye from
the objects of interest. How high the heels of the pretty boots, how
small the tender-tinted gloves, how electrical the flutter of the snowy
skirts! What is Niagara to these things?

Isabel was not willing to own her bridal sisterhood to these blessed
souls; but she secretly rejoiced in it, even while she joined Basil in
noting their number and smiling at their innocent abandon. She dropped
his arm at encounter of the first couple, and walked carelessly at his
side; she made a solemn vow never to take hold of his watch-chain in
speaking to him; she trusted that she might be preserved from putting
her face very close to his at dinner in studying the bill of fare;
getting out of carriages, she forbade him ever to take her by the waist.
All ascetic resolutions are modified by experiment; but if Isabel did
not rigorously keep these, she is not the less to be praised for having
formed them.

Just before they reached the bridge to Goat Island, they passed a
little group of the Indians still lingering about Niagara, who make the
barbaric wares in which the shops abound, and, like the woods and the
wild faces of the cliffs and precipices, help to keep the cataract
remote, and to invest it with the charm of primeval loneliness. This
group were women, and they sat motionless on the ground, smiling
sphinx-like over their laps full of bead-work, and turning their dark
liquid eyes of invitation upon the passers. They wore bright kirtles,
and red shawls fell from their heads over their plump brown cheeks and
down their comfortable persons. A little girl with them was attired in
like gayety of color. "What is her name?" asked Isabel, paying for a
bead pincushion. "Daisy Smith," said her mother, in distressingly good
English. "But her Indian name?" "She has none," answered the woman, who
told Basil that her village numbered five hundred people, and that they
were Protestants. While they talked they were joined by an Indian, whom
the women saluted musically in their native tongue. This was somewhat
consoling; but he wore trousers and a waistcoat, and it could have been
wished that he had not a silk hat on.

"Still," said Isabel, as they turned away, "I'm glad he hasn't
Lisle-thread gloves, like that chieftain we saw putting his forest
queen on board the train at Oneida. But how shocking that they should be
Christians, and Protestants! It would have been bad enough to have them
Ca