steology had passed
away with them; and in the large house on the Domplein lived a baron,
with half a dozen noisy, happy, healthy children,--young _fraulas_ and
_jonkheers_,--who scampered up and down the marble passages, and fell
headlong down the steep, narrow, unlighted stairways, to the imminent
danger of dislocating their aristocratic little necks. There was a new
race of neat maids, clad in the same neat livery of lilac and black,
who scoured and cleaned, just as Koosje and Dortje had done in the
old professor's day. You might, indeed, have heard the selfsame names
resounding through the echoing rooms: "Koos-je! Dort-je!"

But the Koosje and Dortje were not the same. What had become of Dortje I
cannot say; but on the left-hand side of the busy, bustling, picturesque
Oude Gracht there was a handsome shop filled with all manner of cakes,
sweeties, confections, and liquors--from absinthe to Benedictine,
or arrack to chartreuse. In that shop was a handsome, prosperous,
middle-aged woman, well dressed and well mannered, no longer Professor
van Dijck's Koosje, but the Jevrouw van Kampen.

Yes; Koosje had come to be a prosperous tradeswoman of good position,
respected by all. But she was Koosje van Kampen still; the romance which
had come to so disastrous and abrupt an end had sufficed for her life.
Many an offer had been made to her, it is true; but she had always
declared that she had had enough of lovers--she had found out their real
value.

I must tell you that at the time of Jan's infidelity, after the first
flush of rage was over, Koosje disdained to show any sign of grief or
regret. She was very proud, this Netherland servant-maid, far too proud
to let those by whom she was surrounded imagine she was wearing the
willow for the faithless Jan; and when Dortje, on the day of the
wedding, remarked that for her part she had always considered Koosje
remarkably cool on the subject of matrimony, Koosje with a careless
out-turning of her hands, palms uppermost, answered that she was right.

Very soon after their marriage Jan and his young wife left Utrecht for
Arnheim, where Jan had promise of higher wages; and thus they passed, as
Koosje thought, completely out of her life.

"I don't wish to hear anything more about them, if--you--please," she
said, severely and emphatically, to Dortje.

But not so. In time the professor died, leaving Koosje the large legacy
with which she set up the handsome shop in the Oude Gracht