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d above, came the crushing consciousness that she had to be grateful because those parents had sacrificed their son to her, as they had once said; because they had insisted that Henri should marry her, even though it shattered his career. And that, that was what she could never forgive, because it had always wounded, because it still wounded her vanity. She would have been grateful, for her son's sake, if they had decided that Henri, after a retirement of some years, relying on his influential connections, should resume his career, with her by his side. De Staffelaer had left the diplomatic service, was living at his country-place near Haarlem; and they could never have met him abroad except by some extraordinary coincidence.... No, that she never would and never could forgive them, because of her wounded vanity; it was that which caused the bitterness that almost choked her: the "sacrifice," Henri's career shattered through her. Had she not for five years been the wife of the Netherlands minister at Rome? Had she not filled her position with tact, with grace, even with consummate knowledge of the world, until the Dutch colony praised her _salons_ above those of the other Netherlands legations abroad? Had she not taken pride in that reputation, taken pleasure in the fact that the Dutch colony and Dutch travellers found something in her dinners and receptions that reminded them of Holland and home? How often had she not been told, "Mevrouw, with you, in Rome, everything is most charming, especially when compared with this place and that;" her countrymen used often to complain to her of the dulness and stiffness and exclusiveness of so many of their legations. Would she not have been in her right place by Van der Welcke's side, even though people might talk and cavil at first, because, she, the divorced wife of a minister plenipotentiary, had afterwards married the youngest secretary in the service! But she would have shown tact, it would have been forgotten, it would have subsided into the past. She refused to believe but that all this would have been possible, not for any one else, perhaps, but certainly for her. And this was her grievance, that those two old people--and Henri with them--had never been able to see this as she did; that they had given her their son, with an allowance that meant poverty--two alms for which she was expected to be grateful!--but had left her and him and their child in Brussels, in a corner
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