“And drive away the boarders! There, you see, I answer plainly, too. Do you really imagine that if I could have solved my difficulties by merely eating dry bread I would have troubled you, a comparative stranger, to come all the way from Bois-le-Duc?”
“I don’t know. The women of ’93 could be guillotined, and willing, but they couldn’t eat dry bread.”
However, his tone was gentler, and his manner less assured.
“Now will you let me, as we return to the house, explain how matters really stand?” she said. He nodded silently, and under the bare, sky-piercing oaks she softly told him the long story of her father-in-law’s slow purchase and last testament, of Otto’s life-work and dying charge, of her struggle to continue what they had begun in expectation of better times. He listened, his boy-face puckered up.
“It is your name, too,” she said, in conclusion, “your race, your blood.” And she measured the little plebeian beside her.
“Yes,” he said.
“There it lies. And each rood that belonged to a Van Helmont four hundred years ago belongs to a Van Helmont now.”
“It belongs to you,” he replied, quickly. “And afterwards?”
She faltered.
“It will never pass from my keeping till it passes to a Van Helmont,” she said, “so help me God!”