Court; dinners, dresses, decorations; and all sorts of important matters
concerning visits and visiting-cards. Now, she cared for a human being,
a man, not for the sake of a wedding-ceremony, or stars and ribbons, or
visits of congratulation, but simply so that she might hold him in her
arms. She felt something real blossoming within her; and the feeling was
so strange to her that it made her anxious and unhappy. Their love was
anxious, their love became unhappy, as though it had a foreboding of all
their hidden fate. They both heard it, the heavy footfall of their fate.
It was as though, at their meetings, in their most passionate embraces,
they listened outside to the rustle of one spying on them ... and to
that heavy footfall of their fate. And, from the French novel, with its
seasoned intrigue that seemed to suit them so well, their love turned
into the real tragedy of their lives. She had envious enemies, jealous
because she had given a finer dinner than they, jealous of a handsomer
dress. De Staffelaer was first warned by anonymous letters. Then a
footman whom he had occasion to rebuke flung it in his face that mevrouw
was carrying on with meneer the secretary.... He traced their place of
assignation. He found Van der Welcke there, while Constance had just
time to escape down a back staircase. Amid this damning confusion, Van
der Welcke's denial was tantamount to a confession....

Of course, the scandal was spread abroad at once, in Holland as well as
in Rome. A divorce followed. Constance was condemned by her family and
cast out, left as it were homeless.... She always fancied that the
scandal had been Papa's death: a year later, he pined away, died,
slowly, from the effects of a stroke, broken-hearted over the stain
which his favourite daughter had cast upon all the blameless decorum of
the aristocrat and statesman that he was. She was left as it were
homeless, with a small allowance from De Staffelaer, which she refused
as soon as she was able to do without it....

Then she saw Van der Welcke come to her, to Florence, where she had, so
to speak, taken sanctuary. But he did not come to her of his own accord;
he came sent, forced to go, by his father. For his father would not
suffer him to go his own way and leave this woman to her misery. As she
had given herself to him, his father ordered him, in his turn, to give
up all to her: his name and his career.

Henri van der Welcke had been brought up, from childhoo