furniture. It was part of her nature to want to be high-placed—she was her father’s child—to be rich, to have everything fine and imposing and distinguished about her; and it was as though fate had compelled her, from a child, to have everything a little, a trifle less good than her family and friends. In reality, she was never satisfied, for all her boasting. In reality, she reproached life with its horrible injustice. As a child, she was a plain, unattractive girl, whereas Bertha was at least passable and Constance was decidedly pretty. That Dorine was not pretty either did not console her; she did not even notice it. Both Bertha and Constance had been presented at Court, one as a young woman, the other as a mere girl. After Constance’ marriage, however, her father and mother had conceived a sort of weariness of society; and, whenever Mamma did suggest that it was perhaps time for Adolphine to be presented too, Papa used to say:
“Oh, what good has it done the others?”
And, for one reason or another, Adolphine had never been presented. She never forgave her parents, nor, for that matter, her sisters; but she always said that she did not care in the least for all that fuss about the Court. She was married early, at twenty; she accepted Van Saetzema almost for fear lest life should show itself unjust once more if she refused him. And Van Saetzema had proposed to her, even as hundreds of men propose to hundreds of women, for one or other of those very small reasons of small people which work like tiny wheels in small
