prove them false; but
then, they are his, and I can't reconcile them with what I see is good
in him."

Kitty spoke with half-averted face where she sat beside one of the front
windows, looking absently out on the distant line of violet hills beyond
Charlesbourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her lap and
letting it drop again.

"Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her difficulties, "you oughtn't
to sit against a light like that. It makes your profile quite black to
any one back in the room."

"O well, Fanny, I'm not black in reality."

"Yes, but a young lady ought always to think how she is looking. Suppose
some one was to come in."

"Dick's the only one likely to come in just now, and he wouldn't mind
it. But if you like it better, I'll come and sit by you," said Kitty,
and took her place beside the sofa.

Her hat was in her hand, her sack on her arm; the fatigue of a recent
walk gave her a soft pallor, and languor of face and attitude. Mrs.
Ellison admired her pretty looks with a generous regret that they should
be wasted on herself, and then asked, "Where were you this afternoon?"

"O, we went to the Hotel Dieu, for one thing, and afterwards we looked
into the court-yard of the convent; and there another of his pleasant
little traits came out,--a way he has of always putting you in the wrong
even when it's a matter of no consequence any way, and there needn't be
any right or wrong about it. I remembered the place because Mrs. March,
you know, showed us a rose that one of the nuns in the hospital gave
her, and I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he graciously took it
as if poor Mrs. March had made an advance towards his acquaintance. I do
wish you could see what a lovely place that court-yard is, Fanny. It's
so strange that such a thing should be right there, in the heart of this
crowded city; but there it was, with its peasant cottage on one side,
and its long, low barns on the other, and those wide-horned Canadian
cows munching at the racks of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens all
about among their feet--"

"Yes, yes; never mind all that, Kitty. You know I hate nature. Go on
about Mr. Arbuton," said Mrs. Ellison, who did not mean a sarcasm.

"It looked like a farmyard in a picture, far out in the country
somewhere," resumed Kitty; "and Mr. Arbuton did it the honor to say it
was just like Normandy."

"Kitty!"

"He did, indeed, Fanny; and the cows didn't go down on their knees out