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Rh relations, under familiar skies and among familiar people and things, unyielding though both things and people had often proved. Whereas here, in this house, in this great cavernous, gloomy villa-residence—and she had lived in it since the old man's death fully ten years ago—she had always felt, though the house belonged to them as their inheritance, as their family-residence, a stranger, an intruder, one who had come there by accident. . . along with her husband and her son. She could never shake off this feeling. It pursued her even to her own sitting-room, which, with its bits of furniture from the Kerkhoflaan, was almost exactly the same as her little drawing-room at the Hague. . . . Oh, how the wind blew and how Adeletje was shivering against her: if only the poor child did not fall ill from that long walk! . . . There came the first drops of rain, thick and big, like tears of despair. . . . She put up her umbrella and Adeletje pushed still closer, walked right up against her, under the same shelter, so as to feel safe and warm. . . . The lane now ran straight into the high road; and there, before you, lay the house. . . . It stood in its own big garden—nearly a park, with a pool at the back—like a square, melancholy block, dreary and massive; and she could not understand why Van der Welcke and Addie clung to it so. Or rather she did understand now; but she. . . no, she did not care for the house. It never smiled to her, always frowned, as it stood there broad and severe, as though imperishable, behind the front-garden, with the dwarf rose-bushes and standard roses wound in straw, awaiting the spring days. . . . It looked down upon her with its front of six upper windows as with stern eyes, which suffered but never forgave her. . . . It was like the old man himself, who had died without forgiving. . . . Oh,