n as much a part of it as any
smile or sidelong glance of them all? And hath not the long experience
of the fair taught them that artful dress is half the virtue of their
spells? Full well they know it; and when Kitty resolved to profit no
longer by Fanny's wardrobe, she had won the hardest part of the battle
in behalf of perfect truth towards Mr. Arbuton. She did not, indeed,
stop with this, but lay awake, devising schemes by which she should
disabuse him of his errors about her, and persuade him that she was no
wife for him.

XII.

THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT.

"Well," said Mrs. Ellison, who had slipped into Kitty's room, in the
morning, to do her back hair with some advantages of light which her own
chamber lacked, "it'll be no crazier than the rest of the performance;
and if you and he can stand it, I'm sure that _we_'ve no reason to
complain."

"Why, I don't see how it's to be helped, Fanny. He's asked it; and I'm
rather glad he has, for I should have hated to have the conventional
headache that keeps young ladies from being seen; and at any rate I
don't understand how the day could be passed more sensibly than just as
we originally planned to spend it. I can make up my mind a great deal
better with him than away from him. But I think there never was a more
ridiculous situation: now that the high tragedy has faded out of it, and
the serious part is coming, it makes me laugh. Poor Mr. Arbuton will
feel all day that he is under my mercilessly critical eye, and that he
mustn't do this and he mustn't say that, for fear of me; and he can't
run away, for he's promised to wait patiently for my decision. It's a
most inglorious position for him, but I don't think of anything to do
about it. I could say no at once, but he'd rather not."

"What have you got that dress on for?" asked Mrs. Ellison, abruptly.

"Because I'm not going to wear your things any more, Fanny. It's a case
of conscience. I feel like a guilty creature, being courted in another's
clothes; and I don't know but it's for a kind of punishment of my deceit
that I can't realize this affair as I ought, or my part in it. I keep
feeling, the whole time, as if it were somebody else, and I have an
absurd kind of other person's interest in it."

Mrs. Ellison essayed some reply, but was met by Kitty's steadfast
resolution, and in the end did not prevail in so much as a ribbon for
her hair.

It was not till well into the forenoon that the preparations