young foster-father at last settled down among them all as a doctor, in the great house at Driebergen; and then that immense change in their lives: his marriage, his dreadfully premature marriage. . . . Oh, that marriage of her son's! . . . She had had to summon all her deeper wisdom and to clutch it with convulsive hands . . . in order to approve . . . to approve . . . and not for a single moment to let herself be dragged along by all the prejudices of the old days, the prejudices of the narrow little circle which she had learnt to scorn in her later life, the life which had become permanent! . . . Now he was really a husband, now he was really a father.
"Aunt Constance . . . do come!"
It was Gerdy's voice; and it fidgeted her. They were all very nice, certainly, but also they were all very restless; and she was really a woman for loneliness and dreams—had become so—and sometimes felt a need to be quite alone . . . quite alone . . . in her room; to lie on her sofa and think . . . above all things, to think herself back into the years which had sped and sped and sped as fleeting shadows of time. . . .
A tripping step came hastening up the stairs, followed by a tapping at the door:
"Auntie! Aunt Constance. . . . I've made tea; and, if you don't come, it'll be too strong. . . ."
She would have liked to tell Gerdy that she did not care for that calling out all over the house and through the passages: it always jarred upon her, as though the clear, girlish voice profaned that brown indoor atmosphere of the sombre old house which was so full of the past . . . as though the old people were still living there and might be shocked by all that youthful carelessness and presumption. But she never did tell her.
