y.

"Look you, mistress, here I am lord of life and death. Yet in the case
of your husband I yield up that power to you. Say but the word and I
sign the order for his gaol delivery at dawn."

"I have come to say that word," she informed him.

A moment he looked up at her, his smile broadening, a flush mounting to
his cheek-bones. Then he rose and sent his chair crashing behind him to
the ground.

"Herrgott!" he grunted; and he gathered her slim, trembling body to his
massive gold-laced breast.

Soon after sunrise on the morrow she was beating at the gates of
Middelburg gaol, a paper clutched convulsively in her left hand.

She was admitted, and to the head gaoler she showed the paper that she
carried.

"An order from the Governor of Zeeland for the gaol delivery of Philip
Danvelt!" she announced almost hysterically.

The gaoler scanned the paper, then her face. His lips tightened.

"Come this way," he said; and led her down a gloomy corridor to the cell
where yesterday she had seen her husband.

He threw wide the door, and Sapphira sprang in.

"Philip!" she cried, and checked as suddenly.

He lay supine and still upon the miserable pallet, his hands folded
upon his breast, his face waxen, his eyes staring glassily through
half-closed lids.

She sped to his side in a sudden chill of terror. She fell on her knees
and touched him.

"Dead!" she screamed, and, kneeling, span round questioning to face the
gaoler in the doorway. "Dead!"

"He was hanged at daybreak, mistress," said the gaoler gently.

She rocked a moment, moaning, then fell suddenly forward across her
husband's body in a swoon.

That evening she was again at the Gravenhof to see Rhynsault, and again
she was admitted--a haggard faced woman now, in whom there was no trace
of beauty left. She came to stand before the Governor, considered him
in silence a moment with a loathing unutterable in her glance, then
launched into fierce recriminations of his broken faith.

He heard her out, then shrugged and smiled indulgently.

"I performed no less than I promised," said he. "I pledged my word to
Danvelt's gaol delivery, and was not my gaol delivery effective? You
could hardly suppose that I should allow it to be of such a fashion as
to interfere with our future happy meetings."

Before his leering glance she fled in terror, followed by the sound of
his bestial laugh.

For a week thereafter she kept her house and brooded. Then one day she
sa