conversation. It
can't matter to you in the least whether I, your despised sister, like
or dislike anything in or about you. Spiteful, hateful words have been
spoken between us; and we have seen into each other's souls. You never
had any affection for me, nor any indulgence nor mercy, whereas I
believed that you had and tried to find a sister in you. I failed; and
that is all. There is nothing more. We will end this conversation, if
you please; and, if you don't mind, when we meet at Mamma's or
elsewhere, let us act as though there had been nothing said between us.
That is all I ask of you."

She rang. The parlour-maid appeared. Adolphine stood staring at
Constance; and her lips began to swell with the venom of the words which
she felt rising to her lips.

"It's to let Mrs. van Saetzema out, Truitje," said Constance, quietly.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Constance, when she was alone, burst into a fit of nervous sobbing....
Oh, that past, that wretched past, which always clung to her, which
there was no shaking off! She thought life unjust and the family and
everybody. She was not a wicked woman: there was only one mistake to be
charged against her, the mistake of her heedless youth; and were the
consequences to last for ever?... After all, what she now wished was so
little, so very little, that she could not understand why it remained so
unattainable. She merely asked to live quietly at the Hague, in her own
country, and to be loved a little by all her relations, for whom she
felt that strange, powerful feeling, that family-affection. That was
all; she asked for nothing more. She demanded nothing more of life than
to be allowed to grow old like that, with a little forgiveness and
forbearance around her, and then to see her boy grow up into a man,
while she, for the boy's sake, would endure her life, as best she could,
by the side of her husband. That was all, that was all. That was the
only thing that she, with her small soul, asked of life; and she asked
nothing more; and it was as though all sorts of secret enmities around
her grudged it to her. Whereas she wished for nothing but peace and
quietness, enmity seemed to eddy around her. Why did people hate her so?
And why could they not make somebody else or something else the subject
of their talk, of their spiteful, malevolent talk, if they really found
it impossible to do without talking?

She continued greatly dispirited for days, went out very little, seeing
onl