e? Look upon it as only natural--and try to make
your friends look upon it as natural--that you should receive me!"

"I should be very glad to do all that you ask of me, Constance, if there
was not the objection that we see and always have seen relations and
friends of De Staffelaer's."

"Isn't your sister worth a single effort to you?"

"I can't choose between my husband and my sister."

"Bertha!" said Constance, almost weeping with excitement and
nervousness. "Bertha! Try! For Heaven's sake, try to do what I ask! It's
for my child! It's not for me: it's for my son! He will have to take up
a career which I, which I made impossible for Van der Welcke. Do it for
my son's sake. God in His Heaven! Must I go on my knees to you? Do it, I
beseech you, Bertha: try, try to do it; speak to Van Naghel...."

"Constance, I will speak to Van Naghel; but how can you ever hope not
that we, but that other people will forgive, will forget: De
Staffelaer's relations, De Staffelaer's old friends?"

"Yes, I do hope it! And, if you help me, Bertha, if you help me, it will
not be so utterly impossible."

"How do I know that Mrs. van Eilenburgh or the Van den Heuvel Steyns
will ever come to us again, after meeting you at my house?"

"So you decline?" cried Constance, flaring up. "So you refuse?"

"Constance, I should like to do what you ask; there is nothing I should
like better. But people, but Van Naghel...."

"Then let me speak to Van Naghel!"

"Constance...."

"Let me speak to Van Naghel, I say!"

"Don't make a scene."

"I shan't make a scene; but let me speak to Van Naghel. I see your
husband is getting up: he has finished playing. Tell him I want to speak
to him. Let Van der Welcke be present at our conversation. Paul, you
must be there too...."

"But, Constance, why, why speak to him? I am so afraid Mamma will
notice...."

"No, Mamma will see nothing. I want to give her as little pain as
possible. But I must speak to your husband, in your presence and Van der
Welcke's. I must, Bertha, and I will. Call your husband. And we'll go
into the boudoir."

She rose, trembling. She was shaking all over; and, as she almost fell
where she stood, a sudden thought arose in her and paralyzed all her
energies:

"Why am I talking like this, thinking like this, wishing this? How small
I am, how small my conduct is! Really, what does it all matter: people;
and what they think; and what they write and say? Is that life? Is that
all