They had “travelled.” It had been very interesting; and Anne was better. Certainly she was much better. They were on their way home now, moving at a leisurely pace--what was there to return for?--from one scene of gorgeous unreality to another. And all the while Anne had never spoken--never really spoken! She had simply, a day or two after Mrs. Clephane’s furtive trip to Baltimore, told her mother that her engagement was broken: “by mutual agreement” were the stiff old-fashioned words she used. As no one else, even among their nearest, had been let into the secret of that fleeting bond, there was no one to whom explanations were due; and the girl, her curt confidence to her mother once made, had withdrawn instantly into the rigid reserve she had maintained ever since. Just so, in former days, Kate Clephane had seen old Mrs. Clephane meet calamity. After her favourite daughter’s death the old woman had never spoken her name. And thus with Anne; her soul seemed to freeze about its secret. Even the physical resemblance to old Mrs. Clephane reappeared, and with it a certain asperity of speech, a sharp intolerance of trifles, breaking every now and again upon long intervals of smiling apathy. During their travels the girl was more than ever attentive to her mother; but her solicitude seemed the result of a lesson in manners inculcated long ago (with the rest of her creed) by old Mrs. Clephane. It was impossible for a creature so young and eager to pass unseeingly through the scenes of their journey; but it was clear that each momentary enthusiasm only deepened the inner pang. And from all participation in that hidden conflict between youth and suffering the mother continued to feel herself shut out. Nevertheless, she began to imagine that time was working its usual miracle. Anne’s face was certainly less drawn--Anne’s manner perhaps a shade less guarded. Lately she had begun to sketch again ... she had suggested one day their crossing from Rio to Marseilles, continuing their wanderings in the Mediterranean ... had spoken of Egypt and Crete for the winter.... Mrs. Clephane acquiesced, bought guide-books, read up furtively, and tried to temper zeal with patience. It would not do to seem too eager; she held her breath, waiting on her daughter’s moods, and praying for the appearance of the “some one else” whose coming mothers invoke in such contingencies. That very afternoon, sitting on the hotel balcony above a sea of flowers, she had suffered herself to wonder if Anne, who was off on a long riding excursion with a party of young people, might not return with a different look, the clear happy look of the last year’s Anne. The young English planter to whose _hacienda_ they had gone had certainly interested her more than any one they had hitherto met.