get at Gerrit and Adeline’s; or Adolphine’s harum-scarum dinners. . . . No, this is as it should be: a quiet, friendly little dinner and yet everything just right. . . . Van Vreeswijck’s dinner-jacket looks very well on him; only I don’t like the cut of his waistcoat: too high, I think, his waistcoat. Those are nice buttons of his. But he’s wearing a ready-made black tie! How is it possible! Strange how you suddenly perceive an aberration like that in a man: a ready-made tie! Who on earth wears a ready-made tie nowadays! Still, he looks very well otherwise. . . . Nice soup, this velouté. . . . What a duck Constance looks! Would you ever think that she was a woman of two-and-forty! She’s like Mamma: Mamma also has that softness, that distinction, that same smile; Mamma even has those dimples still, in the corners of her mouth. . . . No, none of my other sisters could have done that, pulled back the hangings herself with that pretty gesture and asked us so naturally to come in to dinner. . . . You’ll see, Constance will make her house very cosy, even though they are not rich and though they won’t go into society officially. These friendly little dinners are just the thing. . . .”
He had to join in the conversation now, with Van Vreeswijck; and Van der Welcke, who was in a pleasant mood, let himself go in a burst of irrepressible frankness:
“Tell me, Vreeswijck, who is it that’s been saying we wanted to be presented at Court? . . .”
Van Vreeswijck hesitated, thought it a dangerous
