against her, was connected with the best Dutch families; because Constance had a title; because Addie was the only one of her grandchildren who bore a title, good family though the Van Naghels were. Oh, those grandchildren, whom she now saw so seldom! And, now that the terrible thing had befallen Ernst, the terrible thing which the children had at first wished to conceal from her, but which she had guessed nevertheless, because she had so long feared it, feared it indeed from the time when Ernst was a tiny child—oh, what frightful convulsions he used to have as a child!—now that the terrible thing had befallen Ernst, it was Constance in whose arms she was first able to sob out her grief, in whose arms she first felt how sorely she had been stricken in her declining days:
"Connie," she cried, her voice broken with sobs, "Connie darling, it's true! . . . Ernst . . . Ernst is mad!"
And the word which no one had yet uttered to her, though she had guessed what they meant, rang shrill through the fast-darkening room, in which every whisper was suddenly hushed in terror at the shrill sound of the old woman's high-pitched voice. Silence fell upon everything; and the word sent a shudder through the room. The children looked at one another, because Mamma had uttered the word which none of them had spoken, though they had thought it silently. The word which Mamma
