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Rh "You've known him a long time, haven't you?" asked Constance, when he was gone.

"Oh dear, yes!" said Mathilde, vaguely.

The nurse brought down Jetje and Constant for Grandmamma to see: after that, the children were to go out for a little longer.

"They look well," said Constance, huskily.

She felt a heavy pressure of inexplicable melancholy on her heart, a pressure so heavy that she could have cried, so heavy that she felt her eyes grow moist in spite of herself.

"Yes," said Mathilde, "they're very healthy. It's quite a system that Addie and I are practising with that special diet and the regular time each day in the open air. The other day it was blowing a gale . . . and Addie absolutely insisted that they should go out all the same. And I must say I agree with him."

Suddenly, while Jetje was sitting on her lap and Constant tugging at her skirts, Constance took Mathilde's hand:

"Then things are all right between you?" she whispered, almost imploringly.

"How do you mean?"

"You are happy now, Mathilde . . . here at the Hague?"

"Certainly, Mamma. . . . You yourself understood, didn't you, that I longed for a house of my own."

"Yes, dear, I understood."

"Only . . ."

"What?"

"I am sorry to have robbed you of Addie."

"But, my dear, a son does not belong to his parents."

"Still, I reproach myself. . . . But I could not stay with you any longer. You understood that it