mighty life-and-death struggle between
Holland and Spain, and in the two wars with England, the first when
Cromwell ruled, the second when the Second Charles was on the throne,
held up the fame and glory of Holland. In one case he swept the proud
navies of Spain from the seas and carried the Dutch flag around the
world. In the other, he was only vanquished after stubborn sea-fights
lasting for days, and only ended then because the stout admiral lay on
his deck with an English bullet in his heart. This Van Tromp was the
heir of the fame and the wealth of all the Van Tromps, and both had gone
on accumulating for 300 years.

The self-styled Countess knew all this, and, as the sequel shows, knew
her man. She was 40, had been beautiful, was still comely, with good
figure, fair-haired, but with steel-blue eyes. She spoke many languages
and had dwelt in every land from Petersburg to Paris. It is needless to
tell how they first met or of the intimacy that sprang up between them,
but I will merely say in passing that within five days of their first
meeting he had given her a magnificent diamond bracelet, which had been
in his family more than a century. This alarmed his two daughters, who
were terrified at the mere suspicion that their father was in earnest,
and might possibly present them with a stepmother, above all, a
comparatively young stepmother, and, so far as physique went, a
magnificent animal, with promise of a long life--so long that her rights
of dower would make a cut in the Van Tromp estates and treasures, which
might well cause the old Admiral to rouse himself from his three-century
sleep in Dordrecht Church and once more walk these glimpses of the moon
in protest of the sacrilege. Then the scandal of a Countess-adventuress
becoming a Van Tromp--head of that family, too! They knew of his
penchant for the Countess, and cared nothing for it, until, with a
feeling akin to horror they observed at the dress ball one night the
Countess airing the historic bracelet. It would require a volume to
relate the scenes that followed in the Van Tromp domicile on this
paralyzing discovery; but prayers, tears and histrionic touches were all
met by the stolid reply of Van Tromp: "I please myself."

As a last resort the daughters appealed to the Countess, offering all
their ready cash and a pension if she would only disappear. But visions
of the Van Tromp diamonds and of the Van Tromp bank account were in her
head and she was deaf