ession, a rapture as of having won her and made
her his own forever, by saving her from that horrible risk. The maze in
which he had but now dwelt concerning her seemed an obsolete frivolity
of an alien past; all the cold doubts and hindering scruples which he
had felt from the first were gone; gone all his care for his world. His
world? In that supreme moment, there was no world but in the tender eyes
at which he looked down with a glance which she knew not how to
interpret.

She thought that his pride was deeply wounded at the ignominy of his
adventure,--for she was sure he would care more for that than for the
danger,--and that if she spoke of it she might add to the angry pain he
felt. As they hurried along she waited for him to speak, but he did not;
though always, as he looked down at her with that strange look, he
seemed about to speak.

Presently she stopped, and, withdrawing her hand from his arm, she
cried, "Why, we've forgotten my cousin!"

"O--yes!" said Mr. Arbuton with a vacant smile.

Looking back they saw the colonel standing on the pavement near the end
of the old Sault au Matelot, with his hands in his pockets, and
steadfastly staring at them. He did not relax the severity of his gaze
when they returned to join him, and appeared to find little consolation
in Kitty's "O Dick, I forgot all about you," given with a sudden,
inexplicable laugh, interrupted and renewed as some ludicrous image
seemed to come and go in her mind.

"Well, this may be very flattering, Kitty, but it isn't altogether
comprehensible," said he, with a keen glance at both their faces. "I
don't know what you'll say to Uncle Jack. It's not forgetting me alone:
it's forgetting the whole American expedition against Quebec."

The colonel waited for some reply; but Kitty dared not attempt an
explanation, and Mr. Arbuton was not the man to seem to boast of his
share of the adventure by telling what had happened, even if he had
cared at that moment to do so. Her very ignorance of what he had dared
for her only confirmed his new sense of possession; and, if he could, he
would not have marred the pleasure he felt by making her grateful yet,
sweet as that might be in its time. Now he liked to keep his knowledge,
to have had her unwitting compassion, to hear her pour out her unwitting
relief in this laugh, while he superiorly permitted it.

"I don't understand this thing," said the colonel, through whose dense,
masculine intelligence some