now, having made everybody laugh and given the conversation a lively
turn, she was as perfectly content as if she had not been herself an
offering to the cause of cheerfulness. She was, indeed, equal to any
sacrifice in the enterprise she had undertaken, and would not only have
given Kitty all her worldly goods, but would have quite effaced herself
to further her own designs upon Mr. Arbuton. She turned again to her
guide-book, and left the young people to continue the talk in unbroken
gayety. They at once became serious, as most people do after a hearty
laugh, which, if you think, seems always to have something strange and
sad in it. But besides, Kitty was oppressed by the coldness that seemed
perpetually to hover in Mr. Arbuton's atmosphere, while she was
interested by his fastidious good looks and his blameless manners and
his air of a world different from any she had hitherto known. He was one
of those men whose perfection makes you feel guilty of misdemeanor
whenever they meet you, and whose greeting turns your honest good-day
coarse and common; even Kitty's fearless ignorance and more than Western
disregard of dignities were not proof against him. She had found it easy
to talk with Mrs. March as she did with her cousin at home: she liked to
be frank and gay in her parley, to jest and to laugh and to make
harmless fun, and to sentimentalize in a half-earnest way; she liked to
be with Mr. Arbuton, but now she did not see how she could take her
natural tone with him. She wondered at her daring lightness at the
breakfast-table; she waited for him to say something, and he said, with
a glance at the gray heaven that always overhangs the Saguenay, that it
was beginning to rain, and unfurled the slender silk umbrella which
harmonized so perfectly with the London effect of his dress, and held it
over her. Mrs. Ellison sat within the shelter of the projecting roof,
and diligently perused her book with her eyes, and listened to their
talk.

"The great drawback to this sort of thing in America," continued Mr.
Arbuton, "is that there is no human interest about the scenery, fine as
it is."

"Why, I don't know," said Kitty, "there was that little settlement round
the saw-mill. Can't you imagine any human interest in the lives of the
people there? It seems to me that one might make almost anything out of
them. Suppose, for example, that the owner of that mill was a
disappointed man who had come here to bury the wreck of his life