"That I...?"
"That you are not Papa's daughter!" shrieked the other, getting more excited at every word, deliberately screwing herself up into a frenzy of nerves. "They're slandering Mamma, they're slandering Mamma! Yes, they're saying that you're not Papa's daughter!"
Constance shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, what do you say to it?" demanded Adolphine.
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Nothing?" cried Adolphine, beside herself because Constance remained so cool at such a revelation. "Nothing? Oh, I expect you're accustomed to have people talking about you. Well, I'm not, d'you see? I have always been used to decency and respectability in my circle, among my friends. No one ever talked about us before. No one ever said that I wasn't Papa's daughter...."
"You can't tell. There's time yet!" said Constance.
"Yes, you don't care!" Adolphine blubbered, furiously. "You, with your stuck-up coolness, you're so eaten up with conceit that you don't take anything to heart. I'm not like that. I'm sensitive, I'm easily affected, it hurts me when people talk about us. But then I'm not used to it as you are!"
And Adolphine kept squeezing the tears out of her eyes, wishing to convey that she was misunderstood and misjudged and very sensitive; wishing also to make Constance feel that it was Constance' fault and that there was plenty more that was Constance' fault. Constance, however, remained cool.
Though a single unfortunate word from her husband was enough to set her nerves on edge and her temper seething, she kept calm and cold towards her sister, because, after the fight between their boys, she had settled accounts with Adolphine, written her off as it were; and this feeling had depressed her too much to allow her now to excite herself into a quarrel. She wondered if she was overdoing it; and, to settle the matter, she said: