er saw one, but I could imagine it must be
beautiful," and they both looked on in silence a moment, while the nuns
moved, shadow-like, out of the garden, and left it empty.

Then Mr. Arbuton said something to which Kitty answered simply, "I'll
see if my cousin doesn't want me," and presently stood beside Mrs.
Ellison's sofa, a little conscious in color. "Fanny, Mr. Arbuton has
asked me to go and see the cathedral with him. Do you think it would be
right?"

Mrs. Ellison's triumphant heart rose to her lips. "Why, you dear,
particular, innocent little goose," she cried, flinging her arms about
Kitty, and kissing her till the young girl blushed again; "of course it
would! Go! You mustn't stay mewed up in here. _I_ sha'n't be able to go
about with you; and if I can judge by the colonel's _breathing_, as he
calls it, from the room in there, _he_ won't, at present. But the idea
of _your_ having a question of propriety!" And indeed it was the first
time Kitty had ever had such a thing, and the remembrance of it put a
kind of constraint upon her, as she strolled demurely beside Mr. Arbuton
towards the cathedral.

"You must be guide," said he, "for this is my first day in Quebec, you
know, and you are an old inhabitant in comparison."

"I'll show the way," she answered, "if you'll interpret the sights. I
think I must be stranger to them than you, in spite of my long
residence. Sometimes I'm afraid that I _do_ only fancy I enjoy these
things, as Mrs. March said, for I've no European experiences to contrast
them with. I know that it _seems_ very delightful, though, and quite
like what I should expect in Europe."

"You'd expect very little of Europe, then, in most things; though
there's no disputing that it's a very pretty illusion of the Old World."

A few steps had brought them into the market-square in front of the
cathedral, where a little belated traffic still lingered in the few old
peasant-women hovering over baskets of such fruits and vegetables as had
long been out of season in the States, and the housekeepers and
serving-maids cheapening these wares. A sentry moved mechanically up and
down before the high portal of the Jesuit Barracks, over the arch of
which were still the letters I. H. S. carved long ago upon the keystone;
and the ancient edifice itself, with its yellow stucco front and its
grated windows, had every right to be a monastery turned barracks in
France or Italy. A row of quaint stone houses--inns and sh