"I do think it so very nice," she said, "to have both the Mammas together at my table...."
CHAPTER XXVIII
In a small town like the Hague, the sudden appearance of Constance and her husband, after many years, could not but be the occasion for an interchange of gossip that was not easily silenced. The Van Lowe family had connections in various sets—the aristocratic set, the upper official world, the military set, the Indian set—and, just because of these connections in more than one set, there arose a cross-fire of criticism and condemnation, neither of which had lost any of its sharpness, even though people had not given a thought to Constance for years. On the contrary, the gossip was a sort of raking up of all that could be remembered of former days, a repetition of all the criticism and all the condemnation which these very people, for the most part, fifteen years ago, had passed among themselves, from one to another, as so much current coin. If it had sometimes seemed to Constance as though the period of her absence contracted and was no longer twenty years, to all those people who knew her, or knew her relations, or knew relations of her relations, that interval had no existence whatever; and it was as though the scandal dated from yesterday, as though she had married her lover, Van der Welcke, yesterday. And, while she herself, in her gentle happiness and melancholy contentment at being back among her kinsfolk, in her country, for which she had longed so greatly abroad, while she noticed nothing of this cross-fire, through which she walked quietly—in the street, at the time of the two weddings, at Scheveningen and now—it continued among all those people—acquaintances, friends, relations—continued, never ceased fire. To all of them she had remained the Mrs. De Staffelaer of old, who had never returned to the Hague since her marriage and who was now back with Van der Welcke. At visits, at tea-parties, at evening-parties, at the Witte or the Plaats, at Scheveningen, everywhere, the rapid cross-fire began, as a pleasant sport for all of them:
"You know, Mrs. De Staffelaer...."
"Van Lowe that was...."
"Yes, the one who went off with Van der Welcke...."
"Yes, I remember: she married him...."
"Yes, she's back."
"Yes, so I hear."