"Oh dear, yes!" said Mathilde, vaguely.
The nurse brought down Jetje and Constant for Grandmamma to see: after that, the children were to go out for a little longer.
"They look well," said Constance, huskily.
She felt a heavy pressure of inexplicable melancholy on her heart, a pressure so heavy that she could have cried, so heavy that she felt her eyes grow moist in spite of herself.
"Yes," said Mathilde, "they're very healthy. It's quite a system that Addie and I are practising with that special diet and the regular time each day in the open air. The other day it was blowing a gale ... and Addie absolutely insisted that they should go out all the same. And I must say I agree with him."
Suddenly, while Jetje was sitting on her lap and Constant tugging at her skirts, Constance took Mathilde's hand:
"Then things are all right between you?" she whispered, almost imploringly.
"How do you mean?"
"You are happy now, Mathilde ... here at the Hague?"
"Certainly, Mamma.... You yourself understood, didn't you, that I longed for a house of my own."