children very much up-to-date, but the parents, nevertheless, sensible people of weight and distinction, quite aware how far they themselves could go and how far they could let the children go. The real position was not even suspected by a soul. Bertha never spoke to anybody, not even to her mother, of anything that had the faintest connection with money. To their relations and friends, the house in the Bezuidenhout spread its broad front with such an air of solid dignity, the staircases, the drawing-rooms and dining-room with their stately, handsome furniture, the children’s rooms—more modern in style, but still with no flimsy affectation of tawdry elegance—all made so great an impression of imperishable prosperity that no one could ever have suspected that the two parents sometimes sat reckoning up for hours at a time to see whether they could reduce their expenses by as much as a thousand guilders that month. In this house of theirs, notwithstanding all the bustle, the dinners, the approaching wedding, the approaching home-coming of the eldest son, for whom a set of rooms was being prepared on the top floor, everything seemed to go so methodically, without any trouble—busily, it is true, but quite harmoniously—that no one would ever have suspected the least difficulty. Mamma van Lowe was constantly at Bertha’s during these days and even neglected Constance a little; but she loved this bustle: the alterations on the top floor; the fuss about the trousseau; the rehearsals of the wedding-theatricals; the long tables to be laid, the flowers to be arranged, the visits to be
