Nollie was gathering up her wrap and hand-bag. She had to get back to Long Island, she said; Kate understood that she meant to return to the Drovers’. As she reached the door a last impulse of avowal seized the older woman. What if, by giving Nollie a hint of the truth, she could make sure of her support and thus secure Anne’s safety? But what argument against the marriage would be more efficacious on Nollie’s lips than on her own? One only--the one that no one must ever use. The terror lest Nollie, possessed of that truth, and sickened by it, should after all reveal it in a final effort to prevent the marriage, prevailed over Mrs. Clephane’s other fears. Once Nollie knew, Anne would surely get to know; the horror of that possibility sealed the mother’s lips. Nollie, from the threshold, still looked at her wistfully, expectantly, as if half-awaiting the confession; but Mrs. Clephane held out her hand without a word. * * * * * “I must find out where he is.” It was Kate’s first thought after the door had closed on her visitor. If he were in New York--and he evidently was--she, Kate Clephane, must run him down, must get speech with him, before he had been able to see her daughter. But how was she to set about it? Fred Landers did not even know if he were still with Horace Maclew or not--for the mere fact of Maclew’s not alluding to him while they were together meant nothing, less than nothing. And even if he had left the Maclews, the chances were that Lilla knew where he was, and had already transmitted Anne’s summons. Mrs. Clephane consulted the telephone book, but of course in vain. Then, after some hesitation, she rang up Horace Maclew’s house in Baltimore. No one was there, but she finally elicited from the servant who answered the telephone that Mrs. Maclew was away on a motor trip. Perhaps Mr. Maclew could be reached at his country-place.... Kate tried the country-place, but Mr. Maclew had gone to Chicago. The sense of loneliness and helplessness closed in on her more impenetrably than ever. Night came, and Aline reminded her that she had asked to have her dinner brought up on a tray. Solitary meals in John Clephane’s dining-room were impossible to her. “I don’t want any dinner.” Aline’s look seemed to say that she knew why, and her mistress hastily emended: “Or just some bouillon and toast. Whatever’s ready--” She sat down to it without changing her dress. Every gesture, every act, denoting intimacy with that house, or the air of permanence in her relation to it, would also have been impossible. Again she had the feeling of sitting in a railway station, waiting for a train to come in. But now she knew for what she was waiting.