"You're rather upset this morning, aren't you?"
"Not at all."
"Is it just because our boys had a fight? You've adopted quite a different tone to me since: I've noticed. I can't help it if boys choose to fight."
"Adolphine, don't let us talk of matters that can make us say things which we might regret."
But Adolphine was angry because Constance had refused to come to her dinner. Her invitations had all gone wrong and she wanted Constance; also, she thought that Constance did not value the invitation; also, she thought Constance a snob, with that everlasting Vreeswijck of hers, that Court man....
"Regret?" she said, coldly. "I never say anything that I have to regret. But I can't help it if people at the Hague are saying unpleasant things about us all just now!"
And, working herself into a state of nervous excitement, she tried to cry, in order to make Constance, who was so unkind, feel, once and for all, that not only she, Adolphine, but the whole family had to suffer no end of pain because of Constance. And she managed to get the tears into her eyes and squeezed them out.
But Constance remained indifferent:
"What sort of things?" she asked.
"What sort of things?" snapped Adolphine, furiously, crying with temper, offended at the refusal, forgetting all the nice things that Constance had said about Floortje's trousseau, hating her sister at the moment. "What sort of things? That you are not Papa's daughter!"