... Yes, for thirteen years she had pined! During all that
time, she had seen her mother twice, for a couple of days, because
travelling was such an effort for Mamma, because she herself dared not
go to the Hague, which was so near, so near!

Her brothers, her sisters, her whole family had denied her all that
time, had never been able to forgive the scandal which she had caused,
the blot which she had cast on their name....

She was a girl of twenty-one when she married De Staffelaer. He was an
intimate friend of Papa's: they had been at the University together and
belonged to the same club. Now De Staffelaer was Netherlands minister at
Rome: a good-looking, hale old man; fairly well-suited to his post: not
a political genius, like Papa, she thought; but still full of qualities,
as Papa had always said. She was Papa's favourite; and he had thought it
so pleasant, was proud that De Staffelaer had just fallen in love with
her, like a young man, and been unable to keep away from the
Alexanderstraat when he came to Holland, to the Hague, once a year, on
leave. She remembered Papa's smile when he talked to her about De
Staffelaer, hinting at what might happen.... They had then been living
for five years at the Hague, after Papa had been governor-general for
five years.... She remembered the viceregal period--three years of her
girlhood from twelve to seventeen--remembered the grandeur of it all:
the palaces at Batavia and Buitenzorg; their country-house at Tjipanas;
the balls at which she danced, young as she was; the races; the
aides-de-camp; the great gold _pajong_:[7] all the tropical grandeur and
semi-royalty of a great colonial governorship.... After that, at the
Hague, a quieter time, but still their crowded receptions, their great
dinners to Indian and home celebrities; Bertha back from India, with Van
Naghel; she herself presented at Court.... She loved that life and, from
the time when she was quite a young girl, had known nothing but glamour
around her.... Papa, too, breathed in that element of grandeur: a man of
great political capacity, as she thought, never realizing that Papa had
merely risen through tact; through mediocrity; through a certain
opportune vagueness in his political creed, which was curved and shaded
with every half-curve and half-shade that the needs of the moment might
dictate; through good-breeding, through the eloquence of his
meaningless, easy-flowing sentences, full of the high-sounding
com