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378 long-drawn-out yell. “She’s Ger-trude, Marie’s daugh-ter.”

“Well, then, good-bye, Gertrude.”

“Never mind, Mamma, let them think I’m Gertrude,” said Constance, softly, indulgently, while Mrs. van Lowe became a little irritable, not understanding how very old people could cling so stubbornly to an opinion and a little sad at the thought of Gertrude, who was dead.

And so the weeks passed and the months, very quietly, lonely and monotonously: the dreary months of the unseasonable cold, wet autumn, with heavy storms whipping the trees in the Kerkhoflaan, the wind incessantly howling round the house, the rain clattering down. Constance hardly ever went out, shut herself up indoors, as though her soul had received a hurt, as though she would rather henceforward remain safe in her dear rooms. She was very silent, she looked pale, she often sat thinking, pondering—she hardly knew what—sunk in her melancholy, staring at the fury of the storm outside. She did not often have scenes with Van der Welcke now, as though a brooding sadness had numbed her nerves. At half-past four, she would go to the window and watch longingly for her son, would cheer up a little when she saw him, when he talked nicely and pleasantly, her boy who was becoming more of a man daily. But she did not see very much of him now that he went to the grammar-school and had a lot of work to do in the evenings, which, studious by nature, he did conscientiously.