"He's out," said Van der Welcke, curtly and angrily.
"He hasn't been working," she added. "I always look into Addie's study to see if Guy is at work: Addie asked me to."
"No, he has not been working; he's...."
"Out?"
"Yes, with his bicycle."
"They why didn't he ask you to go with him?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Van der Welcke, angrily, shrugging his shoulders.
Constance too did not think it friendly of Guy:
"What does it mean?" she wondered to herself. "He ought to have been working, but, if he wanted to go cycling, he might really have let his uncle know."
And her soul too became filled with melancholy, because young people were inevitably so ungrateful. But she said nothing to Van der Welcke; and they never knew that they often thought and felt alike, as in an imperceptible harmony of approaching old age that found only a negative expression: they so seldom quarrelled nowadays, at most exchanged a single irritable word, even though no deep sympathy had ever come to them....