e had listened eagerly. Again the door opened and
Greta announced the Heer van Goorl. That she could not see the Captain
Montalvo evidently surprised the woman, for her eyes roamed round the
room wonderingly, but she was too well trained, or too well bribed, to
show her astonishment. Gentlemen of this kidney, as Greta had from time
to time remarked, have a faculty for vanishing upon occasion.

So Dirk walked into the fateful chamber as some innocent and
unsuspecting creature walks into a bitter snare, little knowing that
the lady whom he loved and whom he came to win was set as a bait to ruin
him.

"Be seated, cousin," said Lysbeth, in a voice so forced and strained
that it caused him to look up. But he saw nothing, for her head was
turned away from him, and for the rest his mind was too preoccupied to
be observant. By nature simple and open, it would have taken much
to wake Dirk into suspicion in the home and presence of his love and
cousin, Lysbeth.

"Good day to you, Lysbeth," he said awkwardly; "why, how cold your hand
is! I have been trying to find you for some time, but you have always
been out or away, leaving no address."

"I have been to the sea with my Aunt Clara," she answered.

Then for a while--five minutes or more--there followed a strained and
stilted conversation.

"Will the booby never come to the point?" reflected Montalvo, surveying
him through a join in the tapestry. "By the Saints, what a fool he
looks!"

"Lysbeth," said Dirk at last, "I want to speak to you."

"Speak on, cousin," she answered.

"Lysbeth, I--I--have loved you for a long while, and I--have come to ask
you to marry me. I have put it off for a year or more for reasons which
I hope to tell you some day, but I can keep silent no longer, especially
now when I see that a much finer gentleman is trying to win you--I mean
the Spanish Count, Montalvo," he added with a jerk.

She said nothing in reply. So Dirk went on pouring out all his honest
passion in words that momentarily gathered weight and strength, till at
length they were eloquent enough. He told her how since first they met
he had loved her and only her, and how his one desire in life was to
make her happy and be happy with her. Pausing at length he began to
speak of his prospects--then she stopped him.

"Your pardon, Dirk," she said, "but I have a question to ask of you,"
and her voice died away in a kind of sob. "I have heard rumours about
you," she went on presently