“Councillor De Vrees died yesterday, and there is to be a great funeral.  Every Dutchman in town will be there, and many others beside, He has left an immense fortune.”

“Who told you this?” asked Mrs. Moran.

“I met Van Heemskirk and his wife going there.  Madame De Vrees is their daughter.  Now you will see great changes take place.”

“What do you mean, John?”

“Madame De Vrees has long wanted to build a mansion equal to their wealth, but the Councillor would never leave the house he built at their marriage.  Madame will now build, and her children take their places among the great ones of the city.  De Vrees was an oddity; very few people will be sorry to lose him.  He had no good quality but money, and he was the most unhappy of men about its future disposal.  I never understood until I knew him, how wretched a thing it is to be merely rich.”

This conversation again put off Cornelia’s visit, and she virtually abandoned the idea.  Then one morning Mrs. Moran said, “Cornelia, I wish you to go to William Irvin’s for some hosiery and Kendal cottons.  It is a new store down the Lane at number ninety, and I hear his cloths are strangely cheap.  Go and examine them for me.”

“Very well, mother.  I will also look in at Fisher’s;” and it was at Fisher’s that she saw Madame Van Heemskirk.  She was talking to Mr. Henry Fisher as they advanced from the back of the store, and Cornelia had time to observe that madame was in deep mourning, and that she had grown older looking since she had last seen her.  As they came forward madame raised her eyes and saw Cornelia, and then hastily leaving the merchant, she approached her.

“Good-morning, madame,” said Cornelia, with a cheerful smile.

“Good-morning, miss.  Step aside once with me.  A few words I have to say to you;” and as she spoke she drew Cornelia a little apart from the crowd at the counter, and looking at her sternly, said—­

“One question only—­why then did you treat my grandson so badly?  A shameful thing it is to be a flirt.”

“I am not a flirt, madame.  And I did not treat your grandson badly.  No, indeed!”

“Yes, indeed!  He told me so himself.”

“He told you so?”

“He told me so.  Surely he did.”

“That I treated him badly?”

“Pray then what else?  You let a young man love you—­you let him tell you so—­you tell him ‘yes, I love you’ and then when he says marry me, you say, ‘no.’  Such ways I call bad, very bad!  Not worthy of my Joris are you, and so then, I am glad you said ‘no.’”

“I do not understand you.”

“Neither did you understand my Joris—­a great mistake he made—­and he did not understand you; and I do not understand such ways of the girls of this day.  They are shameless, and I am ashamed for you.”

“Madame, you are very rude.”

“And very false are you.”

“I am not false.”