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28 room, my own cupboards. . . Truitje, what did you give your masters to eat?"

"Well, just what you used to, ma'am! . . ."

"So it was all right? I wasn't missed? . . ."

"Oh, but you mustn't go away for so long again, ma'am!" said Truitje, in alarm.

Constance laughed and stretched herself out on her sofa, glad to be home. Van der Welcke left the room with his photograph, Truitje with her work-box.

"Come here, Addie. Papa has had you for seven weeks. Now you belong to me . . . for an indefinite period."

She drew him down beside her, took his hands. It struck him that she looked tired, more like her years, not like her photograph; and, his mind travelling swiftly to his father, he thought his father so young, outwardly a young man and inwardly sometimes a child: Ottocar in a motor-car. ..

"It's strange, Addie," she said, softly, "that you are only fourteen: you always seem to me at least twenty. And I think it strange also that I should have such a big son. So everything is strange. And your mother herself, my boy, is the strangest of all. If you ask me honestly if I like being 'vain,' I mean, taking part in social frivolities, I shouldn't know what to answer. I certainly used to enjoy it in the old days; and, a fortnight ago, I admit I looked upon it as a sort of youth that comes over