“Are they really the only other Van Helmonts besides us?” questioned Ursula.
“Yes,” he answered, recoiling hastily, as she had done, from the proximity of his brother’s name; “but there is a brand-new Van Helmont now—the heir!” He placed a soft finger against little Otto’s bulgy cheek.
“True. How funny! Do you know, I had never thought of it.” She colored. “I never think,” she added, “of what is so far away as that.” She rose and kissed her husband, and held up the child to him.
“Otto,” she added, “supposing—if—if there had been no baby, and”—she stopped.
“The Horst would have been sold by auction,” he burst in, violently, “two months after my death. Do you think I have ever lost sight of that? All through this anxious year, Ursula, the thought has never let me rest.”
The words frightened her. Could anything have brought home more clearly the separation of their lives?
“Theodore van Helmont is a good fellow,” Otto went on, “hard-working and honest. I thoroughly respect him. I should like you to know him. But he isn’t much to look at.”
“Why have they never been here before? I don’t remember hearing of them till you went to Bois-le-Duc.”
“Well, as I tell you, young Theodore isn’t much to look at. And my father greatly objected to his cousin’s marriage at the time; he never would see him after.”
“Whom did he marry?” asked Ursula, looking down into the cradle and readjusting its coverlet. “I mean—what?”