"Forgive the muddle, Adolphine. I was just unpacking my trunks."
"We ought re-ally to be go-ing on, Ka-rel."
"Are you going so soon?"
"Yes, it's rain-ing so; and the brougham is getting so we-et."
"Constance," said Karel. "Did you say that Van der Welcke would be here on Tuesday?"
"I expect so."
"Well, then, give him my kind regards and ... and would you give him my card? Then that'll be all right."
He took a visiting-card from his pocket-book and laid it on a corner of the console-table. Constance looked at him in momentary perplexity. She could not speak for a second or two, did not understand. She herself had been brought up and had lived according to very punctilious rules of card-leaving; but yet she failed to understand how one brother-in-law could leave a card on another brother-in-law, before that other was in town and during a visit paid in his sister's bedroom, amid all the muddle of her unpacked trunks. But she had been so long away from Holland and the Hague; she did not wish it to appear that she did not understand; and, as a woman of the world, she did not, above all, wish it to appear that she thought Karel's performance with the card not only stiff, but intensely vulgar.
She said, with a gentle smile.
"Thank you, Karel. Van de Welcke will appreciate your call greatly."