o years; and this season, owing to the
serious illness of her brother, she had expected to be debarred the
privilege of exhibiting her unimpeachable summer wardrobe (which she
had not _quite_ forgotten) at any of the watering-places. Richard's
rapid improvement and this restless suggestion of John, seemed like a
god-send. _She_ voted for Niagara, if Richard felt that he could endure
the fatigue of the journey. His citadel surrounded on two sides in that
manner, and the genial old doctor faithless, there was little else left
than a surrender, and Richard Crawford surrendered.

Stop!--there was something of which neither had thought for a moment!
They had a guest, whose wishes should be consulted the more religiously
because she would make no parade of them. Would Marion Hobart, who
mourned in heart if not in the sombre hue of her garments, for her last
relative so lately dead--would _she_ be pleased to go into the gay world
of a fashionable watering-place? Not _content_, but _pleased_? If she
would not, the project must be abandoned, whatever the temptations to go
forward. Bell, who had the moment before been about commencing her
action as a committee of one to overhaul Richard's laid-away wardbrobe
and discover what additions would be necessary, had the sphere of her
operations suddenly changed by being sent up-stairs to sound the
inclinations of the young Virginian girl on the subject.

She found Marion Hobart half _en deshabille_, lying upon the bed in her
own little chamber, busily reading and comparing the letter-press with
the coats-of-arms, in a copy of the English Peerage which she had found
in Dick's little library, and to which she had exhibited a scandalously
aristocratic taste by paying more attention than to all the other books
in the house.

"Have you ever been at Niagara, Marion?" asked Bell Crawford, leaning
over her with a sisterly caress.

"No," answered the young girl, looking away from her book, but without
any indication of rising or any sign of that anxious agitation which
inevitably brightens the faces of most American girls who have not seen
the world's-wonder, when that magic word is uttered in their presence.
"Father and some friends were at Saratoga once, when I was a very little
girl. But father was drowned at sea. Grandfather never came North."

"Would you like to see Niagara?" was Bell's second question.

"I do not know," answered the young Virginian girl, with strange
coolness and can