phine’s, it’s always such a queer lot, such a queer lot! I can’t call it anything else. Goodness gracious, what a number of curious people!”
“Mamma,” said Paul, “what do you think of this menagerie of Adolphine’s?”
“Oh, Paul,” sighed the old lady, a little nervously, “I was just saying to Bertha . . . But we mustn’t let any one else notice what we think. . . .”
“I say, Mamma,” asked Gerrit, “do you know who those two are?”
“No, Gerrit. Van Naghel, do you know who those two people are: that stout gentleman and that tall lady?”
“Yes, Mamma: it’s Bruys and his wife. He’s the editor of the Fonograaf: very respectable people, Mamma. . . .”
“My dear Van Naghel! . . .”
Utterly perplexed, the old lady passed on, leaning on Van Naghel’s arm. . . .
Constance had overheard the comments of the family upon Adolphine’s friends. She herself, newcomer that she now was in Hague society, was not so greatly struck by the fact that Adolphine’s guests consisted of all sorts of dissimilar elements: she had sometimes at Rome had to suffer incongruous elements at her big receptions and she had often found, abroad, that it was possible for witty, polished, cultured people to exist, even though they did not belong to her set. Then again she considered that, at a wedding-party, which was attended by relations’ relations and friends’ friends, it was almost inevita-
