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Rh lies could be countenanced for a moment in your house.”

Adolphine, seeing that her pumped-up tears were making no impression, had time to recover herself while Constance was speaking. Inwardly furious, but superficially calm, she now said, spitefully, in a tone of sisterly reproof:

“You must have expected some disappointment on returning to the Hague?”

“Perhaps, but not this disappointment. . . if you had had any affection for me.”

“Come, Constance, it’s not as if I wasn’t fond of you. But it might have been better if you had not come back.”

“It’s a little late to speak of that now, Adolphine: I’m here and I mean to stay. When I wrote to Mamma six months ago. . .”

“Mamma is a mother.”

“I thought that you were a sister.”

“I am not the only one.”

“I hope that the others feel more affection for me and more indulgence than you do.”

“Bertha was against your coming. So was Karel.”

“I thank you for telling me; but, as I said, it is too late now.”

“Gerrit and the others don’t count, because they don’t see people. Bertha and Karel and I have our family, our friends.”

“And I compromise you in their eyes, do I?”

“Your coming here raked up a heap of things