Dwarskijker;[1] and, as she seldom received much by post, she thought that it must have been sent as an advertisement. Suddenly, however, she remembered: the Dwarskijker was an odious little weekly paper edited by a disreputable individual who pried into all the secrets of the great Hague families; who had often been tried for blackmail, but always managed to escape; and who as constantly resumed his vile trade, because the families whom he attacked paid hush-money, whether his attacks were based on truth or calumny. Constance was about to tear up the paper indignantly, when her eye caught the name of Van Aghel, a parody obviously meant for Van Naghel, and she could not help reading on. She then read a nasty little article against her brother-in-law, the colonial secretary, an article crammed with personal attacks on Van Naghel, describing him as a great nonentity, who had made money at the bar in India by means of a shady Chinese practice and had been shoved on in his career by a still greater and more pompous nonentity, his father-in-law, the ex-Governor-general “Van Leeuwen.” The article next attacked Van Naghel’s brother, the Queen’s Commissary in Overijssel, and, in conclusion, it promised, in a subsequent issue of the Dwarskijker to give a glimpse into the immorality of the other relations of this bourgeois who had battened on the Chinese and who had rendered no real service to India. And the writer aimed very pointedly at Mrs. van Naghel’s sister, another
- ↑ The Inspector.
