eau had certainly never witnessed such a
sight as this. One of its young ladies shaken--yes, absolutely shaken
like a refractory child! The very chairs and tables seemed to tremble,
and visibly hope that there was no one in the _salon des eleves_,
behind.

Anne was more startled than hurt by her grandaunt's violence. "I am
sorry to displease you," she said, slowly and very gravely; "but I can
not break my engagement."

Without a word, Miss Vanhorn drew her shawl round her shoulders, pinned
it, crossed the room, opened the door, and was gone. A moment later her
carriage rolled away, and Anne, alone in the drawing-room, listened to
the sound of the wheels growing fainter and fainter, with a chilly
mixture of blank surprise, disappointment, and grief filling her heart.
"But it _was_ right that I should tell her," she said to herself as she
went up stairs--"it _was_ right."

Right and wrong always presented themselves to her as black and white.
She knew no shading. She was wrong; there are grays. But, so far in her
life, she had not been taught by sad experience to see them. "It _was_
right," she repeated to Helen, a little miserably, but still
steadfastly.

"I am not so sure of that," replied Mrs. Lorrington. "You have lost a
year's fixed income for those children, and a second winter here for
yourself; and for what? For the sake of telling the dragon something
which does not concern her, and which she did not wish to know."

"But it was true."

"Are we to go out with trumpets and tell everything we know, just
because it is true? Is there not such a thing as egotistical
truthfulness?"

"It makes no difference," said Anne, despairingly. "I had to tell her."

"You are stubborn, Crystal, and you see but one side of a question. But
never fear; we will circumvent the dragon yet. I wonder, though, why she
was so wrought up by the name Pronando? Perhaps Aunt Gretta will know."

Miss Teller did not know; but one of the husky-voiced old gentlemen who
kept up the "barrier, sir, against modern innovation," remembered the
particulars (musty and dusty now) of Kate Vanhorn's engagement to one of
the Pronandos--the wild one who ran away. He was younger than she was, a
handsome fellow (yes, yes, he remembered it all now), and "she was
terribly cut up about it, and went abroad immediately." Abroad--great
panacea for American woes! To what continent can those who live "abroad"
depart when trouble seizes _them_ in its pitiless cla