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Rh "I should let them talk, Phine."

"What do you believe, Constance?"

"I don't believe a word of it. Addie is in love with his wife."

"That's just it. People say . . ."

"What do they say now?"

"That things are not going so very well between Mathilde and Addie."

"Every young couple has a difficult time now and again. A little difference of opinion . . . I assure you they are happy together."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

"It was Mathilde's wish to come and live here?"

"It was better that she should be on her own, in her own house."

"Oh, she didn't have a scene with you then? That's what people say."

"I never had a single word with Mathilde."

"I see her once in a way. She does not talk nicely of you. She says that she was sacrificed to Gerrit's children, that she did not count at home. When she talks like that, I defend you, for I know how nice you and Van der Welcke are to everybody."

"She may have had a bitter moment that made her speak like that."

"She goes out a lot," said Adolphine.

"When? Whom does she go to?"

"In the evening. Friends. She is hardly ever at home of an evening. She oughtn't to do that . . . without Addie, you know. It's so undomesticated."

"I know she goes out now and then of an evening to have tea . . . with friends."

"Yes, exactly. . . . She's always out. . . . But how well Marietje is looking, Constance! She