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420 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!”