d above, came the
crushing consciousness that she had to be grateful because those parents
had sacrificed their son to her, as they had once said; because they had
insisted that Henri should marry her, even though it shattered his
career. And that, that was what she could never forgive, because it had
always wounded, because it still wounded her vanity.

She would have been grateful, for her son's sake, if they had decided
that Henri, after a retirement of some years, relying on his influential
connections, should resume his career, with her by his side. De
Staffelaer had left the diplomatic service, was living at his
country-place near Haarlem; and they could never have met him abroad
except by some extraordinary coincidence.... No, that she never would
and never could forgive them, because of her wounded vanity; it was that
which caused the bitterness that almost choked her: the "sacrifice,"
Henri's career shattered through her. Had she not for five years been
the wife of the Netherlands minister at Rome? Had she not filled her
position with tact, with grace, even with consummate knowledge of the
world, until the Dutch colony praised her _salons_ above those of the
other Netherlands legations abroad? Had she not taken pride in that
reputation, taken pleasure in the fact that the Dutch colony and Dutch
travellers found something in her dinners and receptions that reminded
them of Holland and home? How often had she not been told, "Mevrouw,
with you, in Rome, everything is most charming, especially when compared
with this place and that;" her countrymen used often to complain to her
of the dulness and stiffness and exclusiveness of so many of their
legations. Would she not have been in her right place by Van der
Welcke's side, even though people might talk and cavil at first,
because, she, the divorced wife of a minister plenipotentiary, had
afterwards married the youngest secretary in the service! But she would
have shown tact, it would have been forgotten, it would have subsided
into the past. She refused to believe but that all this would have been
possible, not for any one else, perhaps, but certainly for her. And this
was her grievance, that those two old people--and Henri with them--had
never been able to see this as she did; that they had given her their
son, with an allowance that meant poverty--two alms for which she was
expected to be grateful!--but had left her and him and their child in
Brussels, in a corner