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Rh for one another, the pride in the names of Van Lowe and Van Naghel, the refusal to suffer any outsider to say a word against a member of the family, even though criticism was not spared within the home itself. But that any acquaintance should dare to reflect upon a member of the family, that they would none of them permit. They had felt that fondness, that tenderness, even for Constance, because she was a sister. And the old lady remembered, in so far as concerned Constance, the philosophical reflexions of her youngest son, Paul; the trouble which Dorine had taken to assemble all the brothers and sisters on that first Sunday-evening; the ready compliance of all her children, for, out of respect to her, none of them had criticized that erring sister in front of her. She saw it in all of them: the family-affection for one another. They all felt themselves to be brothers and sisters; they stood up for one another, even though there were differences of opinion sometimes and even jealousy; they felt united within the family-circle.

That was the crowning glory of her old age, as a mother and grandmother. It represented to her a beautiful idea, a natural ideal, an illusion attained: a comfort for the peaceful declining years of the lonely woman in her big house. That she preferred to be lonely in her big house and would not have Dorine, nor Ernst, nor Paul to live with her was an eccentricity which in no way detracted from her cult of the beautiful idea, from her perfect happiness at seeing the ideal realized, the illusion attained.