Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/162

154 had the opportunity to develop it. And Constance wondered at Van Raven, pale, thin, stuttering, stammering, spruce and yet awkward, with one shoulder higher than the other and his three hairs of a moustache twisted up towards his eyes. He was at the Foreign Office and he belonged to a family whose rigid Dutch orthodoxy was shocked by much in the Van Lowes, in the Van Naghels and especially in the Indian element of the Ruyvenaers: nevertheless, in view of the general reputation for wealth enjoyed by the colonial secretary, they had considered his daughter a suitable match for their son. Van Naghel and Bertha were making her a handsome allowance.

When Emilie and Van Raven passed on, exchanging civilities with the guests, Constance expressed her surprise to Paul:

“Can she really be fond of him?”

“She? Not a bit of it! Then why is she marrying him, you ask? That’s just the mystery. Van Naghel and Bertha are not husband-hunters, like Adolphine. Louise has had three proposals and refused them all. And why Emilietje—that delicate, white little thing, who really has something nice about her: something artistic, something dainty, something exquisite and, I should say, almost something natural—why she accepted that weedy ass, who puts on German ways on the strength of a fortnight in Berlin, with his moustache twisted à la Kaiser and his stiff military bows, I really cannot tell you. Bertha, who was very glad when Otto