ey! Then the molens which
Stoutenburg had said were his headquarters, where he stored arms and
ammunition and enough gunpowder to blow up the wooden bridge which spans
the Schie and over which the Stadtholder and his bodyguard must pass.

Every word that Stoutenburg and her brother and the others had spoken
that night, rang now in her ears like a knell: Delft, Ryswyk, the
molens, the wooden bridge! Delft, Ryswyk, the molens, the wooden bridge!
Delft....

Delft was quite near, less than four leagues away ... the Stadtholder
was there now ... he could be warned before it was too late ... and she
could warn him without compromising her brother and his friends.... Then
it was that she remembered that in the room below there slept a knave
who would do anything for gold.

Thus she had run down to him full of eagerness and full of hope. And now
he had refused to help her, and worse still had guessed at a secret
which, if he bartered or sold it, meant death to her brother and his
friends.

Contempt and hate had broken down her spirit. Smothering both, she was
even now ready to fall on her knees, to plead with him, to pray, to
implore ... if only that could have moved him ... if only it meant
safety for the Stadtholder, and not merely a useless loss of pride and
of dignity.

Anger and misery and utter hopelessness! they were causing her tears,
and she hated this man who had her in his power and mocked her in her
misery: and there was the awful thought that the Stadtholder was so
near--less than four leagues away! Why! had she been free she could have
run all the way to him--that hideous crime, that appalling tragedy in
which her brother would bear a hand, could be averted even now if she
were free! Oh! the misery of it! the awful, wretched helplessness! in a
few days--hours mayhap--the Stadtholder would be walking straight into
the trap which his murderers had set for him ... the broken bridge! the
explosion! the assassin at the carriage door! She saw it all as in a
vision of the future, and her brother in the midst of it all with hands
deeply stained in blood.

And she could avert it all--the crime, the sorrow, the awful, hideous
shame if only she were free.

She looked up at last, ashamed of her tears, ashamed that a rogue should
have seen how keenly she suffered.

She looked up and turned to him once more. The flickering light of the
candles fell full upon his splendid figure and upon his face: it was the
colour