"O, if he doesn't say what he thinks, it'll make no difference."

"It seems to me that this is a good deal of fuss to make about one human
being, a mere passing man and brother of a day, isn't it?" said the
colonel. "Go on with Donnacona, do."

There came a knock at the door. Kitty leaped nervously to her feet, and
fled out of the room. But it was only the little French serving-maid
upon some errand which she quickly despatched.

"Well, _now_ what do you think?" asked Mrs. Ellison.

"Why, I think you've a surprising knowledge of French for one who
studied it at school. Do you suppose she understood you?"

"O, nonsense! You know I mean Kitty and her very queer behavior.
Richard, if you moon at me in that stupid way," she continued, "I shall
certainly end in an insane asylum. Can't you see what's under your very
nose?"

"Yes, I can, Fanny," answered the colonel, "if anything's there. But I
give you my word, I don't know any more than millions yet unborn what
you're driving at." The colonel took up the book which Kitty had thrown
down, and went to his room to try to read up Donnacona for himself,
while his wife penitently turned to a pamphlet in French, which he had
bought with the others. "After all," she thought, "men will be men"; and
seemed not to find the fact wholly wanting in consolation.

A few minutes after there was a murmur of voices in the entry without,
at a window looking upon the convent garden, where it happened to Mr.
Arbuton, descending from his attic chamber, to find Kitty standing, a
pretty shape against the reflected light of the convent roofs, and
amidst a little greenery of house-plants, tall geraniums, an overarching
ivy, some delicate roses. She had paused there, on her way from Fanny's
to her own room, and was looking into the garden, where a pair of silent
nuns were pacing up and down the paths, turning now their backs with the
heavy sable coiffure sweeping their black robes, and now their still,
mask-like faces, set in that stiff framework of white linen. Sometimes
they came so near that she could distinguish their features, and imagine
an expression that she should know if she saw them again; and while she
stood self-forgetfully feigning a character for each of them, Mr.
Arbuton spoke to her and took his place at her side.

"We're remarkably favored in having this bit of opera under our windows,
Miss Ellison," he said, and smiled as Kitty answered, "O, is it really
like an opera? I nev