"Here comes the train, Uncle."
The train steamed slowly into the station, like a grey ghost of a train through the ghostly, drizzling mist; and the waiting relations saw Constance, Van der Welcke and Emilie get out, Emilie leaning heavily upon Constance. Then came the dreary, dreary task of taking possession of the coffin. The hearse was waiting outside. And it all went as in a dream, in the ghostly, drizzling mist....
"How people will talk!" Uncle Ruyvenaer whispered to Karel and Van Saetzema, with whom he was sitting in the second coach.
"Yes, it's a damned rotten business."
"It's not over-respectable...."
"Having a nephew who becomes a clown...."
"And then, it seems, goes and gets murdered in Paris...."
"For a girl?"
"Yes ... some obscure story about a girl ... in Paris."
"I thought he had committed suicide?"