“What is the matter with you?  The shares give no interest now; I have told Uncle that; but Uncle knows as well as I that they will pay.  Do you think Uncle will let himself be cheated by one like me?  Uncle surely understands those things better than any of us.  Has it ever been my intention to give out these shares as good?  Have I said anything but that for him who can wait it may be a good affair?”

Uncle Theodore says nothing; he only hands a package of notes to Maurits.  He wonders if this will make the ghost speak.

“Uncle,” says the little intractable proclaimer of the truth, for it is a known fact that no one can be more intractable than those soft, delicate creature when they are in the right, “these shares are not worth a shilling and will never be.  We all know it at home there.”

“Anne-Marie, you make me out a scoundrel!”

She surveys him all over as if her eyes were the moving blades of a pair of scissors, and she cuts off him bit by bit everything in which she had clothed him; and when at last she sees him in all the nakedness of egotism and selfishness, her terrible little tongue passes sentence upon him:—­

“What else are you?”

“Anne-Marie!”

“Yes, what else are we both,” continues the merciless tongue, which, since it has once started, finds it best to clear up this matter which has tortured her conscience ever since she has begun to realize that this rich man who owned this big estate had a heart too which could suffer and yearn.  So while her tongue is so well started and all shyness seems to have fallen from her, she says:—­

“When we placed ourselves in the chaise at home there, what did we think?  What did we talk about on the way?  About how we would deceive him there.  ‘You must be brave, Anne-Marie,’ you said.  ’And you must be crafty, Maurits,’ I said.  We thought only of ingratiating ourselves.  We wished to have much and we wished to give nothing except hypocrisy.  It was not our intention to say:  ‘Help us, because we are poor and care for one another,’ but we were to flatter and fawn until Uncle was charmed by me or by you; that was our intention.  But we meant to give nothing in return; neither love nor respect nor even gratitude.  And why did you not come alone, why must I come too?  You wished to show me to him; you wished me to—­to—­”

Uncle Theodore rises when he sees Maurits raise his hand against her.  For now he has finished counting, and follows what is passing with his heart swelling with hope.  His heart flies wide open to receive her as she now screams and runs into his arms, runs there without hesitation or consideration, quite as if there were no other place on earth to which to run.

“Uncle, he will strike me!”

And she presses close, close to him.

But Maurits is now calm again.  “Forgive my impetuosity, Anne-Marie,” he says.  “It hurt me to hear you speak in such a childish way in Uncle’s presence.  But Uncle must also understand that you are only a child.  Still I grant that not even the most just wrath gives a man the right to strike a woman.  Come here now and kiss me.  You need not seek protection from me with anybody.”