scarcely intents--accomplished themselves in
many a swift, fugitive revery, while the days went by, and the shadow of
the ivy in the window at which they sat fell, in moonlight and sunlight,
upon Kitty's cheeks, and the fuchsia kissed her hair with its purple and
crimson blossom.

X.

MR. ARBUTON SPEAKS.

Mrs. Ellison was almost well; she had already been shopping twice in the
Rue Fabrique, and her recovery was now chiefly retarded by the
dress-maker's delays in making up a silk too precious to be risked in
the piece with the customs officers, at the frontier. Moreover, although
the colonel was beginning to chafe, she was not loath to linger yet a
few days for the sake of an affair to which her suffering had been a
willing sacrifice. In return for her indefatigable self-devotion, Kitty
had lately done very little. She ungratefully shrunk more and more from
those confidences to which her cousin's speeches covertly invited; she
openly resisted open attempts upon her knowledge of facts. If she was
not prepared to confess everything to Fanny, it was perhaps because it
was all so very little, or because a young girl has not, or ought not to
have, a mind in certain matters, or else knows it not, till it is asked
her by the one first authorized to learn it. The dream in which she
lived was flattering and fair; and it wholly contented her imagination
while it lulled her consciousness. It moved from phase to phase without
the harshness of reality, and was apparently allied neither to the
future nor to the past. She herself seemed to have no more fixity or
responsibility in it than the heroine of a romance.

As their last week in Quebec drew to its close, only two or three things
remained for them to do, as tourists; and chief among the few unvisited
shrines of sentiment was the site of the old Jesuit mission at Sillery.

"It won't do not to see that, Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison, who, as usual,
had arranged the details of the excursion, and now announced them. "It's
one of the principal things here, and your Uncle Jack would never be
satisfied if you missed it. In fact, it's a shame to have left it so
long. I can't go with you, for I'm saving up my strength for our picnic
at Chateau-Bigot to-morrow; and I want you, Kitty, to see that the
colonel sees everything. I've had trouble enough, goodness knows,
getting the facts together for him." This was as Kitty and Mr. Arbuton
sat waiting in Mrs. Ellison's parlor for the d