On their return home they found their brother Gerard seated on a low
stool at their mother's knee: she was caressing his hair with her hand,
speaking very kindly to him, and promising to take his part with his
father and thwart his love no more. The main cause of this change of
mind was characteristic of the woman. She it was who in a moment of
female irritation had cut Margaret's picture to pieces. She had watched
the effect with some misgivings, and had seen Gerard turn pale as death,
and sit motionless like a bereaved creature, with the pieces in his
hands, and his eyes fixed on them till tears came and blinded them. Then
she was terrified at what she had done; and next her heart smote her
bitterly; and she wept sore apart; but, being what she was, dared not
own it, but said to herself, "I'll not say a word, but I'll make it up
to him." And her bowels yearned over her son, and her feeble violence
died a natural death, and she was transferring her fatal alliance to
Gerard when the two black sheep came in. Gerard knew nothing of the
immediate cause; on the contrary, inexperienced as he was in the ins
and outs of females, her kindness made him ashamed of a suspicion he
had entertained that she was the depredator, and he kissed her again
and again, and went to bed happy as a prince to think his mother was his
mother once more at the very crisis of his fate.

The next morning, at ten o'clock, Gerard and Margaret were in the church
at Sevenbergen, he radiant with joy, she with blushes. Peter was
also there, and Martin Wittenhaagen, but no other friend. Secrecy was
everything. Margaret had declined Italy. She could not leave her father;
he was too learned and too helpless. But it was settled they should
retire into Flanders for a few weeks until the storm should be blown
over at Tergou. The cure did not keep them waiting long, though it
seemed an age. Presently he stood at the altar, and called them to him.
They went hand in hand, the happiest in Holland. The cure opened his