nds of one or other lady concerning those
adaptations of Mrs. Ellison's finery to the exigencies of Kitty's daily
life. They pleased their innocent hearts with the secrecy of the affair,
which, in the concealments it required, the sudden difficulties it
presented, and the guiltless equivocations it inspired, had the
excitement of intrigue. Nothing could have been more to the mind of Mrs.
Ellison than to deck Kitty for this perpetual masquerade; and, since the
things were very pretty, and Kitty was a girl in every motion of her
being, I do not see how anything could have delighted her more than to
wear them. Their talk effervesced with the delicious consciousness that
he could not dream of what was going on, and babbled over with
mysterious jests and laughter, which sometimes he feared to be at his
expense, and so joined in, and made them laugh the more at his
misconception. He went and came among them at will; he had but to tap at
Mrs. Ellison's door, and some voice of unaffected cordiality welcomed
him in; he had but to ask, and Kitty was frankly ready for any of those
strolls about Quebec in which most of their waking hours were dreamed
away.

The gray Lady of the North cast her spell about them,--the freshness of
her mornings, the still heat of her middays, the slant, pensive radiance
of her afternoons, and the pale splendor of her auroral nights. Never
was city so faithfully explored; never did city so abound in objects of
interest; for Kitty's love of the place was boundless, and his love for
her was inevitable friendship with this adoptive patriotism.

"I didn't suppose you Western people cared for these things," he once
said; "I thought your minds were set on things new and square."

"But how could you think so?" replied Kitty, tolerantly. "It's because
we have so many new and square things that we like the old crooked ones.
I do believe I should enjoy Europe even better than you. There's a
forsaken farm-house near Eriecreek, dropping to pieces amongst its
wild-grown sweetbriers and quince-bushes, that I used to think a wonder
of antiquity because it was built in 1815. Can't you imagine how I must
feel in a city like this, that was founded nearly three centuries ago,
and has suffered so many sieges and captures, and looks like pictures of
those beautiful old towns I can never see?"

"O, perhaps you will see them some day!" he said, touched by her fervor.

"I don't ask it at present: Quebec's enough. I'm in lo