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142 But to have Paul or Dorine living with her, to be for ever hearing them going in and out would have worked on her nerves. She wandered daily through all the rooms of the big house to see if everything was tidy and in its place. Dorine was slovenly; and Paul was anything but easy to get on with; and Ernst, with his collection of curiosities, she would never be able to have with her, because she was afraid of all the microbes that hang about those old things. But nevertheless she loved them all and she was glad that they lived at the Hague and that she saw them regularly. She was like that and no otherwise.

And she now came every day to Bertha’s, waiting for Otto and his children, until Constance grew jealous and reproached her, saying that she never came to her new house near the Woods.