Old Annunciata and her husband had been left to keep the house in their mistress’s absence, and welcomed the family back. Annunciata, who could manage a little English, was very fond of Connie, and had given special care to the arrangement of her room, which, she said, had been thoroughly cleansed in every nook and corner, even to moving the big clothes-press, a thing which did not often happen. “And under it I found this,” she said, handing Connie a newspaper, which must have come nearly a year before, just after the family went to Florence, and by some mischance had been dropped on the floor and pushed under the press, where it lay until Annunciata’s cleaning brought it to light. It was a London paper, addressed in a strange hand, sent first to her Paris address, 7 Rue Scribe, from which place it had been forwarded to her at Genoa. It did not seem to contain anything of interest as she glanced over its pages. Then her eyes fell upon a few lines with a faint pencil mark around them, and she read that on January 15th there was married in St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, Charles H. Morris, of Boston, Mass., to Miss Catherine Haynes, of Lexington, Kentucky, U. S. A. It was a simple announcement of a year ago, and did not affect Connie at all as she read it, wondering who the parties were and why a notice of their marriage should be sent to her and by whom. Haynes was a new name, while Morris seemed familiar, and suddenly she remembered where she had heard it, and the Morris house at The 4 Corners came back to her, with Kenneth, who had told her of his cousin. This Charles H. might be the same. She had never met him and did not know he was in Europe, nor did it matter. His marriage was nothing to her. And yet there was something about that notice which kept her looking at it, while thoughts of the farmhouse and Kenneth and the old couple crowded her brain with an intense longing to see them again. “And why not?” she asked herself. “I am my own mistress. Why should I stay in this dreary place when there is America, so large and bright and free? My aunt is seemingly happy with her new home and husband. She will not miss me much, and there is no reason why I should not go,” she thought, and she at once communicated her wish to her aunt, who opposed it strongly, while the count was still more vehement in his opposition, and it was this which decided her at last.