"Why not?"

"I don't know your friends. And I don't care about going out."

"Oh!" said Adolphine, nettled. "I suppose my friends are not smart
enough for you? I can tell you, I have the Hijdrechts coming and the
Erkenbouts and the...."

"I'm not saying anything about your friends, but I don't care for
dinner-parties."

"And you give them yourself!"

"I?"

"Yes, as I saw for myself not so long ago."

"I don't give dinner-parties. I have Van Vreeswijck to dinner now and
again."

"To dinner ... with pink candles on the table?"

"Yes, with pink candles."

"Well, if you don't want to come ... this is a free country...."

"Fortunately!"

"You're rather upset this morning, aren't you?"

"Not at all."

"Is it just because our boys had a fight? You've adopted quite a
different tone to me since: I've noticed. _I_ can't help it if boys
choose to fight."

"Adolphine, don't let us talk of matters that can make us say things
which we might regret."

But Adolphine was angry because Constance had refused to come to her
dinner. Her invitations had all gone wrong and she wanted Constance;
also, she thought that Constance did not value the invitation; also, she
thought Constance a snob, with that everlasting Vreeswijck of hers, that
Court man....

"Regret?" she said, coldly. "I never say anything that I have to regret.
But I can't help it if people at the Hague are saying unpleasant things
about us all just now!"

And, working herself into a state of nervous excitement, she tried to
cry, in order to make Constance, who was so unkind, feel, once and for
all, that not only she, Adolphine, but the whole family had to suffer no
end of pain because of Constance. And she managed to get the tears into
her eyes and squeezed them out.

But Constance remained indifferent:

"What sort of things?" she asked.

"What sort of things?" snapped Adolphine, furiously, crying with temper,
offended at the refusal, forgetting all the nice things that Constance
had said about Floortje's trousseau, hating her sister at the moment.
"What sort of things? That you are not Papa's daughter!"

"That I...?"

"That you are not Papa's daughter!" shrieked the other, getting more
excited at every word, deliberately screwing herself up into a frenzy of
nerves. "They're slandering Mamma, they're slandering Mamma! Yes,
they're saying that you're not Papa's daughter!"

Constance shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, what do you say to it?" dem