For answer, shepointed to the face in the locket."Leonie!
Leonie!" she cried."They are my own sister's children! Surely the hand of God is in this!"Her husband looked at the locket."So it is! So it is!" he said in astonishment."I thought at first you had gone crazy,""See!" cried his wife."It's her wedding-gown, and afterward she gave me those very beads she has around her neck! I have them yet!" She rushed from the room and returned in a moment with the beads in her hand.
Meanwhile Jan and Marie had stood still, too astonished to do more than stare from one amazed and excited face to the other, as their new father and mother gazed, first at them, and then at the locket, and last at the beads, scarcely daring to believe the testimony of their own eyes."To think," cried Madame Dujardin at last, "that I should not have known! But there are many Van Hoves in Belgium, and it never occurred to me that they could be my own flesh and blood.It is years since I have heard from Leonie.In fact, I hardly knew she had any children, our lives have been so different.Oh, it is all my fault," she cried, weeping again.
"But if I have neglected her, I will make it up to her children!
It may be, oh, it is just possible that she is still alive, and that she may yet write to me after all these years! Sorrow sometimes bridges wide streams!"Then she turned more quietly to the children.
"You see, dears," she said, "I left Belgium many years ago, and came with your uncle to this country.We were poor when we came, but your uncle has prospered as one can in America.At first Leonie and I wrote regularly to each other.Then she grew more and more busy, and we seemed to have no ties in common, so that at last we lost sight of each other altogether." She opened her arms to Marie and Jan as she spoke, and held them for some time in a close embrace.