gel of Nemesis close to his heels,
hour-glass in hand to mark the hour of retribution.

He hoped to find rest and peace beside Gilda; he would not tell her that
he had condemned the man to death. Let her forget him peaceably and
naturally; the events of to-day would surely obliterate other matters
from her mind. What was the life of a foreign vagabond beside the
destinies of Holland which an avenging God would help to settle to-day?

The Lord of Stoutenburg had walked rapidly to the hut where he hoped to
find Gilda ready to receive him. He knocked at the door and Maria opened
it to him. To his infinite relief she told him that the jongejuffrouw
had broken her fast and would gladly speak with him.

Gilda, he thought, looked very pale and fragile in the dim light of two
or three tallow candles placed in sconces about the room. There were
dark circles round her eyes, and a pathetic trembling of her lips
proclaimed the near presence of tears.

But there was an atmosphere of peace in the tiny room, with its humble
little bits of furniture and the huge earthenware stove from which the
pleasing glow of a wood fire emanated and shed a cheerful radiance
around.

The Lord of Stoutenburg felt that here in Gilda's presence he could
forget his ambitions and his crimes, the man whom he was so foully
putting to death, his jealousies and even his revenge.

He drew a low chair close to her and half-sitting, half-kneeling, began
speaking to her as gently, as simply as his harsh voice and impatient
temperament would allow. He spoke mostly about the future, only touching
very casually on the pain which she had caused him by her unjust
suspicions of him.

Gilda listened to him in silence for awhile. She was collecting all her
will-power, all her strength of purpose for the task which lay before
her--the task of softening a hardened and treacherous heart, of rousing
in it a spark of chivalry and of honour so that it showed mercy there
where it now threatened injustice, cruelty and almost inhuman cowardice.

A brave man's life was in the hands of this man, who professed love for
her; and though Gilda rejected that love with contempt, she meant,
womanlike, to use that love as a mainspring for the softened mood which
she wished to call forth.

The first thought that had broken in upon her after a brief and troubled
sleep was that a brave young life would be sacrificed to-day to gratify
the petty spite of a fiend. She had been persuade