and cried loudly in terror: "Fraulein, for Heaven's sake,
Fraulein--what are you doing?"

CHAPTER XX.

The burgomaster's wife had been anxious about Henrica, but the latter
greeted her with special cheerfulness and met her gentle reproaches with
the assurance that this morning had done her good. Fate, she said,
was just, and if it were true that confidence of recovery helped the
physician, Doctor Bontius would have an easy task with her. The dead
Castilian must be the wretch, who had plunged her sister Anna into
misery. Maria, surprised, but entirely relieved, left her and sought her
husband to tell him how she had found the invalid, and in what relation
the Spanish officer, slain by Allertssohn, seemed to have stood to
Henrica and her sister. Peter only half listened to her, and when
Barbara brought him a freshly-ironed ruff, interrupted his wife in the
middle of her story, gave her the dead man's letter-case, and said:

"There, let her satisfy herself, and bring it to me again in the
evening, I shall hardly be able to come to dinner; I suppose you'll see
poor Allertssohn's widow in the course of the day."

"Certainly," she answered eagerly. "Whom will you appoint in his place?"

"That is for the Prince to decide."

"Have you thought of any means of keeping the communication with Delft
free from the enemy?"

"On your mother's account?"

"Not solely. Rotterdam also lies to the south. We can expect nothing
from Haarlem and Amsterdam, that is, from the north, for everything
there is in the hands of the Spaniards."

"I'll get you a place in the council of war. Where do you learn your
wisdom?"

"We have our thoughts, and isn't it natural that I should rather follow
you into the future with my eyes open, than blindly? Has the English
troop been used to secure the fortifications on the old canal? Kaak too
is an important point."

Peter gazed at his wife in amazement, and the sense of discomfort
experienced by an unskilful writer, when some one looks over his
shoulder, stole over him. She had pointed out a bad, momentous error,
which, it is true, did not burden him alone, and as he certainly did not
wish to defend it to her, and moreover might have found justification
difficult, he made no reply, saying nothing but: "Men's affairs!
Good-bye until evening." With these words he walked past Barbara,
towards the door.

Maria did not know how it happened, but before he laid his hand on the
latch she gained suf