come, all the more as we are to meet
at Mamma's this evening. You're a good sister." And she kissed
Adolphine. "This is my boy. I brought him to see you the other day, but
you were out."

"How d'ye do, Aunt?" said Addie, stiffly.

"Forgive the muddle, Adolphine. I was just unpacking my trunks."

"We ought re-ally to be go-ing on, Ka-rel."

"Are you going so soon?"

"Yes, it's rain-ing so; and the brougham is getting so we-et."

"Constance," said Karel. "Did you say that Van der Welcke would be here
on Tuesday?"

"I expect so."

"Well, then, give him my kind regards and ... and would you give him my
card? Then that'll be all right."

He took a visiting-card from his pocket-book and laid it on a corner of
the console-table. Constance looked at him in momentary perplexity. She
could not speak for a second or two, did not understand. She herself had
been brought up and had lived according to very punctilious rules of
card-leaving; but yet she failed to understand how one brother-in-law
could leave a card on another brother-in-law, before that other was in
town and during a visit paid in his sister's bedroom, amid all the
muddle of her unpacked trunks. But she had been so long away from
Holland and the Hague; she did not wish it to appear that she did not
understand; and, as a woman of the world, she did not, above all, wish
it to appear that she thought Karel's performance with the card not only
stiff, but intensely vulgar.

She said, with a gentle smile.

"Thank you, Karel. Van de Welcke will appreciate your call greatly."

Her voice sounded friendly and natural; and neither Karel nor Cateau had
any idea that Constance had controlled herself as she had sometimes had
to control herself in Rome, in a diplomatic _salon_ full of intrigue and
polished envy.

In the brougham, Cateau said:

"You did that very clev-erly, Ka-rel, with that card...."

"Yes, I thought it the best way," said Karel, in a burgomasterly manner.

CHAPTER VI

Adolphine looked enviously around her. What a lot Constance must spend
on her clothes; and it was not as if they were well off either, for all
they had to live on was an allowance from Papa and Mamma van der Welcke,
the money which Constance had inherited from her father and the little
that Van der Welcke could scrape together at Brussels, as a wine- and
insurance-agent. Nothing to speak of, all told: that Adolphine knew for
a fact. She admired in particular a magnificent