ANNIE KILBURN

a Novel

BY

W. D. HOWELLS

Author of

"Indian Summer"
"The Rise of Silas Lapham"
"April Hopes" etc.




I.


After the death of Judge Kilburn his daughter came back to America. They
had been eleven winters in Rome, always meaning to return, but staying on
from year to year, as people do who have nothing definite to call them
home. Toward the last Miss Kilburn tacitly gave up the expectation of
getting her father away, though they both continued to say that they were
going to take passage as soon as the weather was settled in the spring.
At the date they had talked of for sailing he was lying in the Protestant
cemetery, and she was trying to gather herself together, and adjust her
life to his loss. This would have been easier with a younger person, for
she had been her father's pet so long, and then had taken care of his