stance, of all people . . . with Van der Welcke. . . . No, it was not feasible . . . because of all those trifles . . . and also because of a strange feeling of delicacy: she did not want to come and live at Mamma's with her husband, with Van der Welcke, long as it was since it had all happened. . . .
"Very well, dear, don't," said the old woman, bitterly; and she nodded her head repeatedly, in sad comprehension of all the disappointments of lonely, melancholy old age. "Yes, yes . . . that's how it is . . . always. . . . And so the old man, down there, is left all alone? . . ."
Constance's heart shrank within her. She saw the old woman's dim eyes look vaguely into her own eyes and she read in the vague glance the uncertain memory of things that had just been said. And, while the eyes gazed dimly, the plaintive voice went on lamenting, with that inward sighing, a broken sound of broken strings, and with a keener note of bitterness through it, so that, with that voice, with that glance, the old woman suddenly aged into the semblance of her old sisters, Auntie Tine, Auntie Rine. . . .
Constance went home through a dismal, heavy rain, hurrying along under the shelter of her umbrella, from which the drops fell in a steady cataract. She could not shake off the gloomy anxiety that haunted her in these days, through which
