Page:Later Life (1919).djvu/211

Rh me," said Bertha. "But, when it is all settled and we have our little villa. . ."

She sank back in her chair and stared before her with dim eyes.

Constance took her hand compassionately, held it tight. It looked as though Bertha, after that busy life which had suddenly snapped with Van Naghel's death, an hour after their last dinner-party, no longer knew what to do or say, felt derelict and helpless. ..

Though there was so much business to attend to, she seemed stunned all at once, in the grip of a strange lethargy, as though everything was now finished, as though there was nothing left now that there would soon be no more visits to pay, no receptions to hold, no dinners to give; now that Van Naghel no longer came home from the Chamber, tired and irritable from an afternoon's heckling; now that there would be no more calculating how they could manage to spend a thousand guilders less a month; now that she would simply have to live quietly on what she and the girls possessed. And it seemed as if she no longer knew how or why she should go on living, now that she would no longer have to give her dinners and pay her visits. . . for her children, particularly her girls. Louise and Marianne had said to her so calmly that they wanted very soon to begin living quietly that Bertha now began to wonder: