disposal in the house of Mynheer Ben Isaje, the banker.

A few hours ago she had come back to it, running like some frightened
animal who had just escaped an awful--but unknown--danger, and had
thrown herself down on the narrow bed in the alcove in an agony of soul
far more difficult to bear than any sorrow which had assailed her during
the last few days.

A great, a vivid ray of hope had pierced the darkness of her misery, it
had flickered low at first, then had glowed with wonderful intensity,
flickered again and finally died down as hope itself fell dying once
more in the arms of despair.

The disappointment which she had endured then amounted almost to
physical pain; her heart ached and beat intolerably and with that
disappointment was coupled a sense of hatred and of humiliation,
different to any suffering she had ever had to bear before.

A man could have helped her and had refused: he could have helped her to
avert a crime more hideous than any that had ever blackened the pages of
this country's history. With that one man's help she could have stopped
that crime from being committed and he had refused ... nay more! he had
first dragged her secret from her, word by word, luring her into
thoughts of security with the hope that he dangled before her.

He knew everything now: she had practically admitted everything save the
identity of those whose crime she wished to avert. But even that
identity would be easy for the man to guess. Stoutenburg, of course, had
paid him to lay hands on her ... but her brother Nicolaes was
Stoutenburg's friend and ally, and his life and that of his friends were
now in the hands of that rogue, who might betray them with the knowledge
which he had filched from her.

No wonder that hour after hour she lay prostrate on the bed, while these
dark thoughts hammered away in her brain. The Prince of Orange walking
unknowingly straight to his death, or Nicolaes--her brother--and his
friends betrayed to the vengeance of that Prince. Ghosts of those who
had already died--victims to that same merciless vengeance--flitted in
the darkness before her feverish fancy: John of Barneveld, the Lord of
Groeneveld, the sorrowing widows and fatherless children ... and in
their trail the ghost of the great Stadtholder, William the Silent
murdered--as his son would be--at Delft, close to Ryswyk and the molens,
where even now Nicolaes her brother was learning the final lesson of
infamy.

When in the late