and then, "Do let
us go," for she had no distinct desire save for movement, for escape
from that place.

Her heart had been surprised, she hardly knew how; but at his kiss a
novel tenderness had leaped to life in it. She suffered him to put her
hand upon his arm, and then she began to feel a strange pride in his
being tall and handsome, and hers. But she kept thinking as they walked,
"I hope he'll never he sorry," and she said it again, half in jest. He
pressed her hand against his heart, and met her look with one of protest
and reassurance, that presently melted into something sweeter yet. He
said, "What beautiful eyes you have! I noticed the long lashes when I
saw you on the Saguenay boat, and I couldn't get away from them."

"O please, don't speak of that dreadful time!" cried Kitty.

"No? Why not?"

"O because! I think it was such a bold kind of accident my taking your
arm by mistake; and the whole next day has always been a perfect horror
to me."

He looked at her in questioning amaze.

"I think I was very pert with you all day,--and I don't think I'm pert
naturally,--taking you up about the landscape, and twitting you about
the Saguenay scenery and legends, you know. But I thought you were
trying to put me down,--you are rather down-putting at times,--and I
admired you, and I couldn't bear it."

"Oh!" said Mr. Arbuton. He dimly recollected, as if it had been in some
former state of existence, that there were things he had not approved in
Kitty that day, but now he met her penitence with a smile and another
pressure of the hand. "Well, then," he said, "if you don't like to
recall that time, let's go back of it to the day I met you on Goat
Island Bridge at Niagara."

"O, did you see _me_ there? I thought you didn't; but _I_ saw _you_. You
had on a blue cravat," she answered; and he returned with as much the
air of coherency as if really continuing the same train of thought, "You
won't think it necessary to visit Boston, now, I suppose," and he smiled
triumphantly upon her. "I fancy that I have now a better right to
introduce you there than your South End friends."

Kitty smiled, too. "I'm willing to wait. But don't you think you ought
to see Eriecreek before you promise too solemnly? I can't allow that
there's anything serious, till you've seen me at home."

They had been going, for no reason that they knew, back to the country
inn near which you purchase admittance to a certain view of the falls,
and