"Come now, Fanny," said the gentleman, who was but too clearly the husband of the last speaker. "You know you insisted, against all I could say or do, upon coming to this house; I implored you to go to the other, and now you blame me for bringing you here." "So I do. If you'd let me have my own way without opposition about coming here, I dare say I should have gone to the other place. But never mind. Kitty knows whom to blame, I hope. She's your cousin." Kitty was sitting with her hands quiescently folded in her lap. She now rose and said that she did not know anything about the other hotel, and perhaps it was just as empty as this. "It can't be. There can't be two hotels so empty," said Fanny. "It don't stand to reason." "If you wish Kitty to see the world so much," said the gentleman, "why don't you take her on to Quebec, with us?" Kitty had left her seat beside Fanny, and was moving with a listless content about the parlor. "I wonder you ask, Richard, when you know she's only come for the night, and has nothing with her but a few cuffs and collars! I certainly never heard of anything so absurd before!" The absurdity of the idea then seemed to cast its charm upon her, for, after a silence, "I could lend her some things," she said musingly. "But don't speak of it to-night, please. It's too ridiculous. Kitty!" she called out, and, as the young lady drew near, she continued, "How would you like to go to Quebec, with us?" "O Fanny!" cried Kitty, with rapture; and then, with dismay, "How can I?" "Why, very well, I think. You've got this dress, and your travelling-suit; and I can lend you whatever you want. Come!" she added joyously, "let's go up to your room, and talk it over!" The two ladies vanished upon this impulse, and the gentleman followed. To their own relief the guiltless eaves-droppers, who found no moment favorable for revealing themselves after the comedy began, issued from their retiracy. "What a remarkable little lady!" said Basil, eagerly turning to Isabel for sympathy in his enjoyment of her inconsequence. "Yes, poor thing!" returned his wife; "it's no light matter to invite a young lady to take a journey with you, and promise her all sorts of gayety, and perhaps beaux and flirtations, and then find her on your hands in a desolation like this. It's dreadful, I think." Basil stared. "O, certainly," he said. "But what an amusingly illogical little body!" "I don't understand what you mean, Basil. It was the only thing that she could do, to invite the young lady to go on with them. I wonder her husband had the sense to think of it first. Of course she'll have to lend her things." "And you didn't observe anything peculiar in her way of reaching her conclusions?" "Peculiar? What do you mean?"