eard in the cathedral of Haarlem."

"Indeed, how could I forget it?"

"Easily now, Gilda," he replied with solemn earnestness. "The plans
which my friends and I formed on that night have been abandoned."

"Abandoned?"

"Yes! Your brother was greatly impressed by all that you said to him. He
persuaded us all to think more lengthily over the matter. Then came the
news of the outrage upon your person, and all thoughts of my ambition
and of my revenge faded before this calamity, and I have devoted every
hour of mine existence since then to find you and to restore you to your
home."

Bewildered, wide-eyed, Gilda listened to him. In all her life hitherto,
she had never come into contact with lying and with deceit: she had
never seen a man lying unblushingly, calmly, not showing signs of
confusion or of fear. Therefore, the thought that this man could be
talking so calmly, so simply, so logically, and yet be trying to deceive
her, never for one moment entered her head. The events of the past few
days crowded in upon her brain in such a maddening array, that, as she
sat here now, face to face with the man whom she had been so ready to
suspect, she could not disentangle from those events one single fact
that could justify her suspicions.

Even looking back upon the conversation which she had had with that
impudent rogue in Leyden and again last night, she distinctly remembered
now that he had never really said a single thing that implicated the
Lord of Stoutenburg or anyone else in this villainy.

She certainly was bewildered and very puzzled now: joy at the thought
that after all the Stadtholder was safe, joy that her brother's hand
would not be stained with murder, or his honour with treachery, mingled
with a vague sense of mistrust which she was powerless to combat, yet
felt ashamed to admit.

"Then, my lord," she murmured at last, "do you really tell me that the
outrage of which I have been the victim was merely planned by villains,
for mercenary motives?"

"What else could have prompted it?" he asked blandly.

"Neither you ... nor ... nor any of your friends had a hand in it?" she
insisted.

"I?" he exclaimed with a look of profound horror. "I?... to do you such
a wrong! For what purpose, ye gods?"

"To ... to keep me out of the way...."

"I understand," he said simply. "And you, Gilda, believed this of me?"

"I believed it," she replied calmly.

"You did not realize then that I would give every drop of m