ill the landlady came. She had another room, but doubted if it
would answer. It was in the attic, and was a back room, though it had a
pleasant outlook. Mr. Arbuton had no doubt that it would do very well
for the day or two he was going to stay, and took it hastily, without
going to look at it. He had his valise carried up at once, and then he
went to the post-office to see if he had any letters, offering to ask
also for Colonel Ellison.

Kitty stole off to explore the chamber given her at the rear of the
house; that is to say, she opened the window looking out on what their
hostess told her was the garden of the Ursuline Convent, and stood there
in a mute transport. A black cross rose in the midst, and all about this
wandered the paths and alleys of the garden, through clumps of
lilac-bushes and among the spires of hollyhocks. The grounds were
enclosed by high walls in part, and in part by the group of the convent
edifices, built of gray stone, high gabled, and topped by
dormer-windowed steep roofs of tin, which, under the high morning sun,
lay an expanse of keenest splendor, while many a grateful shadow dappled
the full-foliaged garden below. Two slim, tall poplars stood against the
gable of the chapel, and shot their tops above its roof, and under a
porch near them two nuns sat motionless in the sun, black-robed, with
black veils falling over their shoulders, and their white faces lost in
the white linen that draped them from breast to crown. Their hands lay
quiet in their laps, and they seemed unconscious of the other nuns
walking in the garden-paths with little children, their pupils, and
answering their laughter from time to time with voices as simple and
innocent as their own. Kitty looked down upon them all with a swelling
heart. They were but figures in a beautiful picture of something old and
poetical; but she loved them, and pitied them, and was most happy in
them, the same as if they had been real. It could not be that they and
she were in the same world: she must be dreaming over a book in
Charley's room at Eriecreek. She shaded her eyes for a better look, when
the noonday gun boomed from the citadel; the bell upon the chapel
jangled harshly, and those strange maskers, those quaint black birds
with white breasts and faces, flocked indoors. At the same time a small
dog under her window howled dolorously at the jangling of the bell; and
Kitty, with an impartial joy, turned from the pensive romance of the
conv