tle wonder that Montalvo slept alone
and was always careful to lock his door.

He need not have taken such precautions; whatever her eyes might say,
Lysbeth had no intention of killing this man. In that prayer of hers she
had, as it were, placed the matter in the hand of a higher Power, and
there she meant to leave it, feeling quite convinced that although
vengeance might tarry it would fall at last. As for her money, he could
have it. From the beginning her instinct told her that her husband's
object was not amorous, but purely monetary, a fact of which she soon
had plentiful proof, and her great, indeed her only hope was that when
the wealth was gone he would go too. An otter, says the Dutch proverb,
does not nest in a dry dyke.

But oh! what months those were, what dreadful months! From time to time
she saw her husband--when he wanted cash--and every night she heard him
returning home, often with unsteady steps. Twice or thrice a week also
she was commanded to prepare a luxurious meal for himself and some six
or eight companions, to be followed by a gambling party at which the
stakes ruled high. Then in the morning, before he was up, strange people
would arrive, Jews some of them, and wait till they could see him, or
catch him as he slipped from the house by a back way. These men, Lysbeth
discovered, were duns seeking payment of old debts. Under such constant
calls her fortune, which if substantial was not great, melted rapidly.
Soon the ready money was gone, then the shares in certain ships were
sold, then the land and the house itself were mortgaged.

So the time went on.

Almost immediately after his refusal by Lysbeth, Dirk van Goorl had left
Leyden, and returned to Alkmaar, where his father lived. His cousin and
friend, however, Hendrik Brant, remained there studying the jeweller's
art under the great master of filigree work, who was known as Petrus.
One morning, as Hendrik was sitting at breakfast in his lodging, it was
announced that a woman who would not give her name, wished to see him.
Moved more by curiosity than by any other reason, he ordered her to be
admitted. When she entered he was sorry, for in the gaunt person and
dark-eyed face he recognised one against whom he had been warned by the
elders of his church as a spy, a creature who was employed by the papal
inquisitors to get up cases against heretics, and who was known as Black
Meg.

"What is your business with me?" Brant asked sternly.