Kitty looked at her cousin a moment with vague amaze. The grossness of
the absurdity flashed upon her, and she felt as if another touch must
bring the tears. She said nothing; but Mrs. Ellison, who saw only that
she was cut off from her heart's desire of gossip, came to the rescue.

"Don't answer a word, Kitty, not a single word; I never heard anything
more insulting from one cousin to another; and I should say it, if I was
brought into a court of justice."

A sudden burst of laughter from Kitty, who hid her conscious face in her
hands, interrupted Mrs. Ellison's defence.

"Well," said Mrs. Ellison, piqued at her desertion, "I hope you
understand yourselves. _I_ don't." This was Mrs. Ellison's attitude
towards her husband's whole family, who on their part never had been
able to account for the colonel's choice except as a joke, and sometimes
questioned if he had not perhaps carried the joke too far; though they
loved her too, for a kind of passionate generosity and sublime,
inconsequent unselfishness about her.

"What I want to know, _now_," said the colonel, as soon as Kitty would
let him, "and I'll try to put it as politely as I can, is simply this:
what made the first part of your walk so disagreeable? You didn't see a
wedding-party, or a child rescued from a horrible death, or a man saved
from drowning, or anything of that kind, did you?"

But the colonel would have done better not to say anything. His wife was
made peevish by his persistence, and the loss of the harmless pleasure
upon which she had counted in the history of Kitty's walk with Mr.
Arbuton. Kitty herself would not laugh again; in fact she grew serious