was no exception to the rule. She did not work as devotedly as she had
hoped to do, nor did she become a recluse from society. A year after she
sent to the artist some sketches which she had taken in Quebec--some
unknown waterfalls, some wild river scenery--and received from him a
warmer letter of commendation than she had hoped for. He remembered
her former sketches, and now saw a great improvement. If the waterfall
sketches were not exaggerations, he would like to see the originals.
Where were they? The lady was proud of her discoveries in the almost
unknown land of Northern Quebec, and she wrote a long letter telling all
about them, and a polite note of thanks for the information ended the
correspondence.

Miss Sommerton's favourite discovery was that tremendous downward plunge
of the St. Maurice, the Falls of Shawenegan. She had sketched it from a
dozen different standpoints, and raved about it to her friends, if such
a dignified young person as Miss Sommerton could be said to rave over
anything. Some Boston people, on her recommendation, had visited the
falls, but their account of the journey made so much of the difficulties
and discomforts, and so little of the magnificence of the cataract, that
our amateur artist resolved to keep the falls, as it were, to herself.
She made yearly pilgrimages to the St. Maurice, and came to have a kind
of idea of possession which always amused Mr. Mason. She seemed to
resent the fact that others went to look at the falls, and, worse than
all, took picnic baskets there, actually lunching on its sacred shores,
leaving empty champagne bottles and boxes of sardines that had evidently
broken some one's favourite knife in the opening. This particular summer
she had driven out to "The Greys," but finding that a party was going up
in canoes every day that week, she promptly ordered her driver to take
her back to Three Rivers, saying to Mr. Mason she would return when she
could have the falls to herself.