with vases that were children. She
did not know what more to say to Ernst; and she now told Mamma, softly,
that old Mr. and Mrs. van der Welcke, her father- and mother-in-law, had
asked them to Driebergen.

Mrs. van Lowe beamed and whispered:

"Child, I am so glad! I am so glad they have done that. It's been
running in my head all this time, what attitude they would take up to
you. After all, Adriaan is their grandson as well as mine."

"For thirteen years ..." Constance began, bitterly.

"Child, child, don't bear malice, don't bear malice. Make no more
reproaches. All will come right, my child. I am so glad. They are
different from us, dear, not so broad-minded, very orthodox and strict
in their principles. And, when, at the time, they insisted that Van der
Welcke should marry you, that was a great sacrifice on their part,
child: it shattered their son's career."

"Why?" exclaimed Constance, in a whisper, but vehemently. "It shattered
his career? Why? Why need he have left the service?"

"Dear, it was so difficult for him to remain, after the scandal."

Constance gave a scornful laugh:

"In that circle, where there is nothing but scandal which they hush up!"

"Hush, child: don't be so violent, don't be so irritable. I am so glad,
Connie! I could kiss those old people. I will call on them too, when you
have been ... to embrace them...."

Mamma was in tears. Constance pressed her hands to her breast: she was
suffocating.

"Very well, Mamma," she said, softly and calmly. "I will be grateful,
all my life long, to Papa and Mamma van der Welcke, to Henri, to you, to
all of you!..."

"Child, don't be bitter. Try to be a little happy now, among us all. We
will all try to be nice to you and to make you forget the past...."

"Mamma!..."

She embraced the old woman:

"Mamma, don't cry! I am happy, I really am, to be back, back among all
of you!"

CHAPTER X

Two days later, Van der Welcke, Constance and Addie were in the train on
their way to Driebergen. The boy, to whom Holland was a new country, was
interested in the vague, dim, low-lying expanses bounded, on the
mist-blurred horizons, by straggling rows of trees, with here and there
a village-steeple; the wind-mills flung out their sails like despairing
arms to the great jaundiced clouds, whose gloomy masses, driven by a
rainy wind, scurried across the lowering skies. The boy asked question
after question, sitting with his hand in his father's; and