Two days later, Van der Welcke, Constance and Addie were in the train on their way to Driebergen. The boy, to whom Holland was a new country, was interested in the vague, dim, low-lying expanses bounded, on the mist-blurred horizons, by straggling rows of trees, with here and there a village-steeple; the wind-mills flung out their sails like despairing arms to the great jaundiced clouds, whose gloomy masses, driven by a rainy wind, scurried across the lowering skies. The boy asked question after question, sitting with his hand in his father’s; and, to avoid the sight of that caress, Constance gazed out of the opposite window, in silence.
They had been to the Van Saetzemas the evening before; and, though Constance felt irritated at first, she ended with a passion of pity. Good heavens, how was it possible that Adolphine had become so common! Whom on earth did she get it from! Mamma, so refined and distinguished! Papa, her poor father, such an aristocrat, a gentleman of the old school! . . . And yet, perhaps, from the Ruyvenaers. You would never have taken Uncle for a brother of Mamma’s. Was it from the Ruyvenaers, perhaps? Great heavens, how common Adolphine was! . . . Her husband was a boor; her house pretentious and slovenly; her girls, the two elder, pretentious, priggish, envious; Marie, the youngest girl,
