She shut the door when she had spoken these words, and then went, a little wearily, upstairs; but if any one had seen her half an hour afterwards sitting with closed eyes and clasped hands asleep in the large chair that stood by her bedside, they would have said, “She has been satisfied.” For though she looked much older when asleep, her face then showed nothing but that sacred peace and refinement which comes only through a constant idea of God’s care and presence. Annette stood still until she heard her grandmother’s door close; then, after a moment or two of indecision, she took from under the sofa-cushion a book, and stood it up before her with a comical air of judgment. “It is all your fault, you unlucky ‘Children of The Abbey,’” she said sternly. “If I had been able to get rid of you, I should have gone with grandmother to Uncle Gerard’s house this morning; and, considering the news, we should certainly have remained there all day. And as grandmother says, ‘if the pot boils, it always boils over on the Bowling Green.’ I ought to have been where I could see and hear all that was going on. I think Sapphira might have sent for me! People are so selfish, and affairs always work so contrary. If I try to be unselfish nothing good comes of it--to me; and if I am reasonably selfish then I am sure to suffer for it. Grandfather de Vries is right; whenever I go to see him, he always mumbles to me: ‘see now, love others well, but thyself most of all.’ Grandfather de Vries is a wise man--every one says so--and he tells me to love myself best of all. Well, I shall have no company this afternoon but these silly ‘Children of The Abbey.’ They are as distractingly absurd as they can be, but I want to know whether they get married or not.” She sought this information with great apparent interest, yet ever as she turned the fascinating leaves, she let the book drop down a minute while she wondered “what was going on on the Bowling Green.” For she had that keen impression of “something missed” which frequently and mockingly informs a person in whom selfishness is ingrained, unconscious, hereditary. And her premonition was more than true. Her uncle at that very hour was standing on the topmost step of the flight leading to his house door, and there was a crowd of young men before him--a crowd drunk with its own passionate enthusiasm--who would not be satisfied until he had spoken. His wife and his daughter stood at his right hand, and at his left his son Christopher held aloft the torn and stained colours that had floated above “Bloommaert’s Men” through the heroic days of the War for Independence. Shout after shout greeted his appearance, and when there was a moment’s pause, a beautiful youth stepped forward and called out: