unimagined trespasses against good taste, not only in pictures and
people, but in all life, which, from having been a very smiling prospect
when she set out with Mr. Arbuton, had suddenly become a narrow pathway,
in which one must pick one's way with more regard to each step than any
general end. All this was as obscure and uncertain as the intimations
which had produced it, and which, in words, had really amounted to
nothing. But she felt more and more that in her companion there was
something wholly alien to the influences which had shaped her; and
though she could not know how much, she was sure of enough to make her
dreary in his presence.

They wandered through the quaintness and noiseless bustle of the Lower
Town thoroughfares, and came by and by to that old church, the oldest in
Quebec, which was built near two hundred years ago, in fulfilment of a
vow made at the repulse of Sir William Phipps's attack upon the city,
and further famed for the prophecy of a nun, that this church should be
ruined by the fire in which a successful attempt of the English was yet
to involve the Lower Town. A painting, which represented the vision of
the nun, perished in the conflagration which verified it, in 1759; but
the walls of the ancient structure remain to witness this singular piece
of history, which Kitty now glanced at furtively in one of the colonel's
guide-books; since her ill-fortune with the picture in the cathedral,
she had not openly cared for anything.

At one side of the church there was a booth for the sale of crockery and
tin ware; and there was an every-day cheerfulness of small business in
the shops and tented stands about the square on which the church faced,
and through which there was continual passing of heavy burdens from the
port, swift calashes, and slow, country-paced market-carts.