"It is false," she reiterated wildly.

Once more that evil sneer distorted his pale face.

"Well!" he said, "whether you bribed him or not matters to me but little. I do believe that willingly you would not have betrayed Nicolaes or me or any of our friends to the Stadtholder, knowing what he is. But you wanted to cross our plans, you wanted to warn the Stadtholder of his danger, and you--not G.o.d--chose that man for your instrument."

"It is not true--I deny it," she repeated fearlessly.

"You may deny it with words, Gilda, but your whole att.i.tude proclaims the truth. Thank G.o.d!" he cried with a note of savage triumph in his voice, "that man is still a helpless prisoner in my hands."

"What do you mean?" she murmured.

"I mean that it is good to hold the life of one's deadliest enemy in the hollow of one's hand."

"But you would not slay a defenceless prisoner," she cried.

He laughed, a bitter, harsh, unnatural laugh.

"Slay him," he cried, "aye that I will, if it is not already done. Did you hear the hammering and the knocking awhile ago? It was Jan making ready the gibbet. And now--though the men have run away like so many verdommde cowards, I know that Jan at any rate has remained faithful to his post. The gibbet is still there, and Jan and I and Nicolaes, we have three pairs of hands between us, strong enough to make an enemy swing twixt earth and heaven, and three pairs of eyes wherewith to see an informer perish upon the gallows."

But already she had interrupted him with a loud cry of overwhelming horror.

"Are you a fiend to think of such a thing?"

"No," he replied, "only a man who has a wrong to avenge."

"The wrong was in your treachery," she retorted, even while indignation nearly choked the words in her throat, "no honest man could refuse to warn another that a murderous trap had been laid for him."

"Possibly. But through that warning given by a man whom I hate, my life is practically at an end."

"Life can only be ended by death," she pleaded, "and yours is in no danger yet. In a couple of hours as you say you will have reached the coast. No doubt you have taken full measures for your safety. The Stadtholder is sick. He hath scarce a few months to live; when he dies everything will be forgotten, you can return and begin your life anew.

Oh! you will thank G.o.d then on your knees, that this last hideous crime doth not weigh upon your soul."

"A wrong unavenged would weigh my soul down with bitterness," he said sombrely. "My life is done, Gilda. Ambition, hope, success, everything that I care for has gone from me. Nicolaes may begin his life anew; he is young and his soul is not like mine consumed with ambition and with hatred. But for that one man, I were to-day Stadtholder of half our provinces and sole ruler of our United Netherlands, instead of which from this hour forth I shall be a fugitive, a pariah, an exile. All this do I owe to one man," he added fiercely, "and I take my revenge, that is all."

He made a feint as if ready to go. But Gilda with a moan of anguish had already held him back. Despite the loathing which the slightest contact with such a fiend caused her, she clung with both her hands to his arm.

"My lord!" she entreated, "in the name of your dear mother, in the name of all that is yet good and pure and n.o.ble in you, do not allow this monstrous crime to add to the heavy load of sin which rests upon your soul. G.o.d is just," she added earnestly, "G.o.d will punish us all if such an infamy is done now at this supreme hour when our destinies are being weighed in the balance."

But he looked down on her suddenly, with an evil leer which sent a chill right through her to her heart.

"Are you pleading for a man who mayhap hath sent your brother to the scaffold?" he asked.

His glance now was so dark and so cruel, the suspicion which lurked in it was so clear, that for the moment Gilda was overawed by this pa.s.sion of hate and jealousy which she was unable to fathom. The quick hot blood of indignation rushed to her pale cheeks.

"It was of Nicolaes that I was thinking," she said proudly, "if that man dies now, I feel that such a dastardly crime would remain a lasting stain upon the honour of our house."

"The crime is on you, Gilda," he retorted, "in that you did betray us all. Willingly or unwittingly, you did deliver me into the hands of my most bitter enemy. But I pray you, plead no more for a knave whom you surely must hate even more bitterly than I do hate him. The time goes by, and every wasted minute becomes dangerous now. I pray you make yourself ready to depart."

She had not given up all thoughts of pleading yet; though she knew that for the moment she had failed, there floated vaguely at the back of her mind a dim hope that G.o.d would not abandon her in this her bitterest need. He had helped her in her direst trouble; He had averted the hideous treachery which threatened to stain her father's honoured name and her own with a hideous mark of shame; surely He would not allow this last most terrible crime to be committed.

No doubt that vague frame of mind, born of intense bodily and mental fatigue, betrayed itself in the absent expression in her eyes, for Stoutenburg reiterated impatiently:

"I can give you a quarter of an hour wherein to make ready."

"A quarter of an hour," she murmured vaguely, "to make ready?... for what?"

"For immediate departure with me and your brother for Belgium."

Still she did not understand. A deep frown of puzzlement appeared between her brows.

"Departure?--with you?--what do you mean, my lord?" she asked.

"I mean," he replied roughly, "that out of the wreckage of all my ambitions, my desires and my hopes I will at least save something that will compensate me for all that I have lost. You said just now that life could only end in death. Well! next to mine ambition and my desire for vengeance, you, Gilda, as you know, do fill my entire soul. With you beside me I may try to begin life anew. I leave for the coast in less than half an hour; Nicolaes will be with us and he will care for you.

But I will not go without you, so you must come with us."

"Never!" she said firmly.

But Stoutenburg only laughed with careless mockery.

"Who will protect you?" he said, "when I take you in my arms and carry you to the sledge, which in a quarter of an hour will be ready for you?

Who will protect you when I carry you in my arms from the sledge to the boat which awaits us at Scheveningen?"

"Nicolaes," she rejoined calmly, "is my brother--he would not permit such an outrage."

An ironical smile curled the comers of his cruel lips. "Do you really think, Gilda," he said, "that Nicolaes will run counter to my will? I have but to persuade him that your presence in Holland will be a perpetual menace to our safety. Besides, you heard what he said just now; that you, of course, would come with us."

"My dead body you can take with you," she retorted, "but I--alive--will never follow you."

"Then 'tis your dead body I'll take, Gilda," he said with a sneer, "I will be here to fetch you in a quarter of an hour, so I pray you make ready while I go to deal with that meddlesome instrument of G.o.d."

She was spent now, and had no strength for more; a great numbness, an overpowering fatigue seemed to creep into her limbs. She even allowed him to take her hand and to raise it to his lips, for she was quite powerless to resist him; only when she felt those burning lips against her flesh a shudder of infinite loathing went right through her body.

Soon he turned on his heel and strode out of the room. She heard the thin wooden door fall to with a bang behind him; but she could no longer see, a kind of darkness had fallen over her eyes, a darkness, in which only one figure appeared clearly--the figure of a man upon a gibbet. All else was blackness around her, impenetrable blackness, almost tangible in its intensity, and out of the blackness which seemed like that of a dungeon there came cries as of human creatures in h.e.l.l.

"Lord have mercy upon him!" her lips, cold and white, murmured vaguely and insistently, "Lord have mercy upon him! Lord have mercy upon us all!"

CHAPTER XLI

"VENGEANCE IS MINE"

It was like a man possessed of devils that the Lord of Stoutenburg ran out through the mist toward the molens.

The grey light of this winter's morning had only vaguely pierced the surrounding gloom, and the bas.e.m.e.nt beneath the molens still looked impenetrably dark. Dark and silent! the soldier--foreign mercenaries and louts--had vanished in the fog, arms hastily thrown down littered the mud-covered ground, swords, pistols, muskets, torn clothing, here and there a neck-cloth, a steel bonnet, a bright coloured sash. Stoutenburg saw it all, right through the gloom, and he ground his teeth together to smother a cry of agonised impotence.