Now Truide, rendered fairly frantic by her enforced confinement to the house, grew to look upon Jan as her only chance of excitement and distraction; and Jan, poor, thick-headed noodle of six feet high, was thoroughly wretched.  What to do he knew not.  A strange, mad, fierce passion for Truide had taken possession of him, and an utter distaste, almost dislike, had come in place of the old love for Koosje.  Truide was unlike anything he had ever come in contact with before; she was so fairy-like, so light, so delicate, so dainty.  Against Koosje’s plumper, maturer charms, she appeared to the infatuated young man like—­if he had ever heard of it he would probably have said like a Dresden china image; but since he had not, he compared her in his own foolish heart to an angel.  Her feet were so tiny, her hands so soft, her eyes so expressive, her waist so slim, her manner so bewitching!  Somehow Koosje was altogether different; he could not endure the touch of her heavy hand, the tones of her less refined voice; he grew impatient at the denser perceptions of her mind.  It was very foolish, very short-sighted; for the hands, though heavy, were clever and willing; the voice, though a trifle coarser in accent than Truide’s childish tones, would never tell him a lie; the perceptions, though not brilliant, were the perceptions of good, every-day common sense.  It really was very foolish, for what charmed him most in Truide was the merest outside polish, a certain ease of manner which doubtless she had caught from the English aristocrats whom she had known in her native place.  She had not half the sterling good qualities and steadfastness of Koosje; but Jan was in love, and did not stop to argue the matter as you or I are able to do.  Men in love—­very wise and great men, too—­are often like Jan van der Welde.  They lay aside pro tem. the whole amount, be it great or small, of wisdom they possess.  And it must be remembered that Jan van der Welde was neither a wise nor a great man.

Well, in the end there came what the French call un denouement,—­what we in forcible modern English would call a smash,—­and it happened thus.  It was one evening toward the summer that Koosje’s eyes were suddenly opened, and she became aware of the free-and-easy familiarity of Truide’s manner toward her betrothed lover, Jan.  It was some very slight and trivial thing that led her to notice it, but in an instant the whole truth flashed across her mind.

“Leave the kitchen!” she said, in a tone of authority.

But it happened that, at the very instant she spoke, Jan was furtively holding Truide’s fingers under the cover of the table-cloth; and when, on hearing the sharp words, the girl would have snatched them away, he, with true masculine instinct of opposition, held them fast.

“What do you mean by speaking to her like that?” he demanded, an angry flush overspreading his dark face.

“What is the maid to you?” Koosje asked, indignantly.