The priest absolves them, and they begin to mount.

They are mounting! They are mounting now." "Mother!" There was sharp pain in Anne's voice.

Who does not know the heartache with which it is seen that the mind of a loved one is wandering from us?
And yet she was puzzled.

She dreaded one of those scenes in which her young strength was barely sufficient to control and soothe the frail form before her.

But they did not begin as a rule in this fashion; here, though the mind wandered, was an absence of the wildness to which she had become inured.