"Con-stance?"
"Yes, you said she was going to Driebergen."
"No, Mam-ma, I never men-tioned Con-stance."
The old woman nodded her understanding nod. Nevertheless she no longer remembered who it was that had told her about Constance; but she preferred not to ask....
And she thought it over, for hours....
CHAPTER XVII
An icy shudder swept over Constance when she arrived at Driebergen and saw the carriage waiting outside the station, with the coachman and the footman:
"How is mevrouw?" she asked, as she stepped in.
But she hardly heard the answer, although she grasped it. She shuddered, icy cold. She shivered in her fur cloak. It had rained steadily for days upon the dreary, wintry trees, out of a sky that hung low but tremendously wide and heavy, as oppressive as a pitiless darkness. Drearily the wintry roads shot forward as the carriage rattled along them. Drearily, in their bare gardens, the houses rose, very sadly, because they were deserted summer dwellings, in the ice-cold winter rain.