morning Maria came into the room to bring her mistress
some warm milk and bread, and to minister to her comforts, she found her
dearly loved jongejuffrouw wide-eyed and feverish.

But not a word could she get out of Gilda while she dressed her hair,
except an assurance that their troubles--as far as Maria could gauge
them--would soon be over now, and that in twenty-four hours mayhap they
would be escorted back to Haarlem.

"When, I trust, that I shall have the joy of seeing three impudent
knaves swing on gibbets in the market place," quoth Maria decisively,
"and one of them--the most impudent of the lot--drawn and quartered, or
burnt at the stake!" she added with savage insistence.

When Gilda was ready dressed, she asked for leave to speak with Mynheer
Ben Isaje. The Jew, obsequious and affable, received her with utmost
deference, and in a few words put the situation before her. Mevrouw
Isaje, he said, was from home: he had not been apprised of the
jongejuffrouw's coming, or his wife would have been ready to receive her
at his private house, which was situated but half a league out of
Rotterdam. But Mevrouw Isaje would return from the visit which she had
been paying to her father in the course of the afternoon, until that
hour Mynheer Ben Isaje begged that the jongejuffrouw would look upon
this miserable hovel as her property and would give what orders she
desired for the furtherance of her comfort. In the afternoon, he
concluded, an escort would once more be ready to convey the
jongejuffrouw to that same private house of his, where there was a nice
garden and a fine view over the Schie instead of the confined outlook on
squalid houses opposite, which was quite unworthy of the jongejuffrouw's
glance.

Gilda did not attempt to stay the flow of Ben Isaje's eloquence: she
thanked him graciously for everything that he had already done for her
comfort.

Maria--more loquacious, and bubbling over with indignation--asked him

when this outrageous confinement of her person and that of her exalted
mistress at the hands of brigands would cease, and if Mynheer Ben Isaje
was aware that such confinement against the jongejuffrouw's will would
inevitably entail the punishment of hanging.

But thereupon Mynheer Ben Isaje merely rubbed his thin hands together
and became as evasive first and then as mute as only those of his race
can contrive to be.

Then Gilda--making an effort to speak unconcernedly--asked him what had
become