who sat at the same table,
with napkins tucked under their chins, refused to have the windows open.
Mr. van Buren wanted to defy them, but his chin looked so square, and
the commercial travelers' eyes got so prominent, that I begged to have
the windows left as they were.

There are churches to see in Enkhuisen, and a beautiful choir screen,
but we hadn't the heart to visit them. We said perhaps we would go
to-morrow, and added in our minds, "if the boat is safely in."

The Rabbit hardly knew what we meant when we asked for a private
sitting-room, and evidently thought it far from a proper request.

To add to our melancholy, a thunder-storm came up after dinner, and
lightning looped like coils of silver ribbon across the sky and back
again, while thunder deadened the chimes of the Dromedary. Still there
was no news, and at last Mr. van Buren went out in torrents of rain to
the harbor.

We could not bear to sit in the dining-room where the commercial
travelers--in carpet slippers--were smoking and discussing Dutch
politics, so we clambered up the greased pole to Lady MacNairne's room,
and talked about Philip the Second, and tortures, while Tibe growled at
the thunder, and looked for it under furniture and in corners.

Nell was in such a black mood that she would have liked Philip to be
tortured through all eternity, because of the horrible suffering he
inflicted on the people of Holland; but I said the worst punishment
would be for his soul to have been purified at death, that he might
suddenly realize the fiendishness of his own crimes, see himself as he
really was, and go on repenting throughout endless years.

It was not an enlivening conversation, and in the midst Mr. van Buren
came to say that there were no tidings of Jonkheer Brederode and the
boat.

Then Nell jumped up, very white, with shining eyes. "Can't we do
something?" she asked.

Her cousin shook his head. "What is there we can do? Nothing! We must
wait and hope that all is well."

"Are you anxious now?" asked Lady MacNairne.

"A little," he admitted.

"I don't know how to bear it," exclaimed Nell, with a choke in her
voice.

I longed to comfort her; but her wretchedness seemed only to harden her
cousin's heart.

He looked at her angrily. "It is late for you to worry," he reproached
her. "If you had shown concern for Rudolph's safety this morning it
would have been gracious; but----"

"Don't!" she said.

Just the one word, and not cross