She knew then that it was the adventurer, the penniless soldier of fortune whom she had tried to hate and to despise, who had quietly gone to warn the Stadtholder, and that his action had been the direct working of God's will in a brave and loyal soul: she knew also by a mysterious intuition which no good woman has ever been able to resist, that the man who had stood before her — self-convicted and self-confessed — had accepted that humiliation to save her the pain of fearing and despising her own brother.
The visions now became more dim and blurred. She remembered Stoutenburg's fury, his hideous threats of vengeance on the man who had thrown himself across his treacherous path. She remembered pleading to that monster, weeping, clinging to his arm in a passionate appeal. She remembered the soul agony which she felt when she realized that that appeal had been in vain.
Then she had stood for a moment silent and alone in the hut. Stoutenburg had left her in order to accomplish that hideous act of revenge.
After that she remembered nothing clearly. She could only have been half-conscious and all round her there was a confusion of sounds, of shouts and clash of arms: she thought that she was being lifted out of the chair into which she had fallen in a partial swoon, that she heard Maria's cries of terror, and that she felt the cold damp morning air striking upon her face.
Presently she knew that Nicolaes was beside her, and that she was being taken home. All else was a blank or a dream.
Now she was tossing restlessly upon the lavender-scented bed in this hostelry so full of memories. Her temples were throbbing, her eyes felt like pieces of glowing charcoal in her head. The blackness around her weighed upon her soul until she felt that she could not breathe.
Outside the silence of the night was being gravely disturbed: there was the sound of horses' hoofs upon the cobble-stones of the yard, the creaking of a vehicle brought to a standstill, the usual shouts for grooms and ostlers. A late arrival had filled the tranquil inn with its bustle and its noise.
Then once again all was still, and Gilda turned her aching head upon the pillow. Though the room was not hot, and the atmosphere outside heavy with frost, she felt positively stifled.
After a while this feeling of oppression became intolerable, she rose, and in the darkness she groped for her fur-lined cloak which she wrapped closely around her. Then she found her way across to the window and drew aside the curtain. No light penetrated through the latticed panes: the waning moon which four nights ago had been at times so marvellously brilliant, had not yet risen above the horizon line. As Gilda's fingers fumbled for the window-latch she heard a distant church clock strike the midnight hour.
She threw open the casement. The sill was low and she leaned out peering up and down the narrow street. It was entirely deserted and pitch dark save where on the wall opposite the light from a window immediately below her threw its feeble reflection. Vaguely she wondered who was astir in the small hostelry. No doubt it was the tap-room which was there below her, still lighted up, and apparently with its small casement also thrown open, like the one out of which she was leaning.
For now, when the reverberating echo of the chiming clock had entirely died away, she was conscious of a vague murmur of voices coming up from below, confused at first and undistinguishable, but presently she heard a click as if the casement had been pushed further open or mayhap a curtain pulled aside, for after that the sound of the voices became more distinct and clear.
With beating heart and straining ears Gilda leaned as far out of the window as she could, listening intently: she had recognized her father's voice, and he was speaking so strangely that even as she listened she felt all the blood tingling in her veins.
"My son, sir," he was saying, "had, I am glad to say, sufficient pride and manhood in him not to bear the full weight of your generosity any longer. He sent a special messenger on horseback out to me this afternoon. As soon as I knew that my daughter was here I came as fast as a sleigh and the three best horses in my stables could bring me. I had no thought, of course, of seeing you here."
"I had no thought that you should see me, sir," said a voice which by its vibrating tones had the power of sending the hot blood rushing to the listener's neck and cheeks. "Had I not entered the yard just as your sledge turned in under the gateway, you had not been offended by mine unworthy presence."
"I would in that case have searched the length and breadth of this land to find you, sir," rejoined Cornelius Beresteyn earnestly, "for half an hour later my son had told me the whole circumstances of his association with you."
"An association of which Mynheer Nicolaes will never be over-proud, I'll warrant," came in slightly less flippant accents than usual from the foreigner. "Do I not stand self-confessed as a liar, a forger and abductor of helpless women? A fine record forsooth: and ere he ordered me to be hanged my Lord of Stoutenburg did loudly proclaim me as such before his friends and before his followers."
"His friends, sir, are the sons of my friends. I will loudly proclaim you what you truly are: a brave man, a loyal soldier, a noble gentleman! Nicolaes has told me every phase of his association with you, from his shameful proposal to you in regard to his own sister, down to this moment when you still desired that Gilda and I should remain in ignorance of his guilt."
"What is the good, mynheer, of raking up all this past?" said the philosopher lightly, "I would that Mynheer Nicolaes had known how to hold his tongue."
"Thank God that he did not," retorted Cornelius Beresteyn hotly, "had he done so I stood in peril of failing — for the first time in my life — in an important business obligation."
"Not towards me, mynheer, at any rate."
"Yes, sir, towards you," affirmed Beresteyn decisively. "I promised you five hundred thousand guilders if you brought my daughter safely back to me. I know from mine own son, sir, that I owe her safety to no one but to you."
"Ours was an ignoble bargain, mynheer," said Diogenes with his wonted gaiety, and though she could not see him, Gilda could picture his face now alive with merriment and suppressed laughter. "The humour of the situation appealed to me — it proved irresistible — but the bargain in no way binds you seeing that it was I who had been impious enough to lay hands upon your daughter."
"At my son's suggestion I know," rejoined Beresteyn quietly, "and from your subsequent acts, sir, I must infer that you only did it because you felt that she was safer under your charge than at the mercy of her own brother and his friends.... Nay! do not protest," he added earnestly, "Nicolaes, as you see, is of the same opinion."
"May Heaven reward you, sir, for that kindly thought of me," said Diogenes more seriously, "it will cheer me in the future, when I and all my doings will have faded from your ken."
"You are not leaving Holland, sir?"
"Not just now, mynheer, while there is so much fighting to be done. The Stadtholder hath need of soldiers...."
"And he will, sir, find none better than you throughout the world. And with a goodly fortune to help you...."
"Speak not of that, mynheer," he said firmly, "I could not take your money. If I did I should never know a happy hour again."
"Oh!"
"I am quite serious, sir, though indeed you might not think that I can ever be serious. For six days now I have had a paymaster: Mynheer Nicolaes' money has burned a hole in my good humour, it has scorched my hands, wounded my shoulder and lacerated my hip, it has brought on me all the unpleasant sensations which I have so carefully avoided hitherto, remorse, humiliation, and one or two other sensations which will never leave me until my death. It changed temporarily the shiftless, penniless soldier of fortune into a responsible human being, with obligations and duties. I had to order horses, bespeak lodgings, keep accounts. Ye gods, it made a slave of me! Keep your money, sir, it is more fit for you to handle than for me. Let me go back to my shiftlessness, my penury, my freedom, eat my fill to-day, starve to-morrow, and one day look up at the stars from the lowly earth, with a kindly bullet in my chest that does not mean to blunder. And if in the days to come your thoughts