I am oppressed by the thought that among the earliest walls which rose upon this broad meadow of Montreal were those built to immure the innocence of such young girls as these and shut them from the life we find so fair.  Wouldn’t you like to know who was the first that took the veil in this wild new country?  Who was she, poor soul, and what was her deep sorrow or lofty rapture?  You can fancy her some Indian maiden lured to the renunciation by the splendor of symbols and promises seen vaguely through the lingering mists of her native superstitions; or some weary soul, sick from the vanities and vices, the bloodshed and the tears of the Old World, and eager for a silence profounder than that of the wilderness into which she had fled.  Well, the Church knows and God.  She was dust long ago.”

From time to time there had fallen little fitful showers during the morning.  Now as the wedding-journeyers passed out of the convent gate the rain dropped soft and thin, and the gray clouds that floated through the sky so swiftly were as far-seen Gray Sisters in flight for heaven.

“We shall have time for the drive round the mountain before dinner,” said Basil, as they got into their carriage again; and he was giving the order to the driver, when Isabel asked how far it was.

“Nine miles.”

“O, then we can’t think of going with one horse.  You know,” she added, “that we always intended to have two horses for going round the mountain.”

“No,” said Basil, not yet used to having his decisions reached without his knowledge.  “And I don’t see why we should.  Everybody goes with one.  You don’t suppose we’re too heavy, do you?”

“I had 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.”