. But Miss Vanhorn drew them away angrily.

"What nonsense!" she said. "Do not let me hear another word. You will
stay according to my pleasure (which should be yours also), or you
forfeit your second winter at Moreau's and the children's allowance."
She tapped on the glass, and signaled to the coachman to drive homeward.
"You have spoiled the drive with your obstinacy; I do not care to go
now. Spend the day in your own room. At five o'clock come to me."

And at five Anne came.

"Have you found your senses?" asked the elder woman, and more gently.

"I have not changed my mind."

Miss Vanhorn rose and locked the door. "You will now give me your
reasons," she said.

"I can not."

"You mean that you will not."

Anne was silent, and Miss Vanhorn surveyed her for a moment before
letting loose the dogs of war. In her trouble the girl looked much
older; it was a grave, sad, but determined woman who was standing there
to receive her sentence, and suddenly the inquisitor changed her course.

"There, there," she said; "never mind about it now. Go back to your
room; Bessmer shall bring you some tea, and then you will let her dress
you precisely as I shall order. You will not, I trust, disobey me in so
small a matter as that?"

"And may I go to-morrow?"

"We will see. You can not go to-night, at any rate; so do as I bid you."

Anne obeyed; but she was disappointed that all was not ended and the
contest over. For the young, to wait seems harder than to suffer.

Miss Vanhorn thought that her niece was jealous of Helen in regard to
Dexter, and that this jealousy had opened her eyes for the first time to
her own faithlessness; being conscientious, of course she was, between
the two feelings, made very wretched. And the old woman's solution of
the difficulty was to give Dexter one more and perfect opportunity, if
she, Katharine Vanhorn, could arrange it. And there was, in truth, very
little that old Katharine could not arrange if she chose, since she was
a woman not afraid to use on occasion that which in society is the
equivalent of force, namely, directness. She was capable of saying,
openly, "Mr. Dexter, will you take Anne out on the piazza for a while?
The air is close here," and then of smiling back upon Rachel, Isabel, or
whoever was left behind, with the malice of a Mazarin. Chance favored
old Katharine that night once and again.

CHAPTER XVII.

"That which is not allotted, the hand can not reach, and