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44 Nice, it struck her that Van der Welcke was still there. . . that he was staying on in her drawing-room, a thing which he never did except when Paul was there, or Gerrit. . . He sat on, without saying much; but that happy smile never left his lips. . . Yet she still thought:

"I am mistaken; it is only imagination; there is nothing, or at most a little mutual attraction; and what harm is there in that?"

But, be this as it might, she, who was so jealous where her son was concerned, now felt not the least shade of jealousy amid her wondering doubts. Yes, it was all gone, any love, passion, sentiment that she had ever entertained for Henri. It was quite dead. . . And, now that he smiled like that, she noticed, with a sort of surprise, how young he was:

"He is thirty-eight," she thought, "and looks even younger."

As he sat there, calmly, always with the light of a smile on his face, it struck her that he was very young, with a healthy, youthful freshness, and that he had not a wrinkle, not a grey hair in his head. . . His blue eyes were almost the eyes of a child. Even Addie's eyes, though they were like his father's, were more serious, had an older look. . . . And, at the sight of that youthfulness, she thought herself old, even though she was now showing Marianne the pretty photograph from Nice. . . Yes, she felt old; and she was hardly surprised—