see that I am not deceived! 'tis the Lord
of Stoutenburg who gave you money to play this trick on me. He paid
you! paid you, I say, and you, a man who should be fighting for your
country, were over ready to make war upon a woman. Shame on you! shame I
say! 'tis a deed that should cause you to blush, if indeed you have a
spark of honesty in you, which of a truth I do gravely doubt."

She had worked herself up into an outburst of indignation and flung
insult upon insult on him in the vague hope indeed of waking some
slumbering remnant of shame in his heart, and mayhap ruffling that
imperturbable air of contentment of his, and that impudent look of
swagger most unbecoming in a menial.

But by naming Stoutenburg, she had certainly brought to light many
things which Diogenes had only vaguely suspected. His mind--keen and
shrewd despite his follies--recalled his interview with Nicolaes
Beresteyn in the studio of Frans Hals; all the details of that interview
seemed suddenly to have gained significance as well as lucidity. The
lofty talk anent the future of Holland and the welfare of the Faith was
easily understandable in this new light which the name of Stoutenburg
had cast upon it. Stoutenburg and the welfare of Holland! a secret the
possession of which meant death to six selfless patriots or the
forfeiture mayhap of her good name and her honour to this defenceless
girl! Stoutenburg at the bottom of it all! Diogenes could have laughed
aloud with triumph so clear now was the whole scheme to him! There was
no one living who did not think that at some time or other Stoutenburg
meant to come back and make yet one more attempt to wipe a blood-stain
from the annals of his country by one equally foul.

One of Barneveld's sons had already paid for such an attempt with his
life; the other had escaped only in order to intrigue again, to plot
again, and again to fail. And this poor girl had by a fortuitous mishap
overheard the discussion of the guilty secret. Stoutenburg had come
back and meant to kill the Stadtholder: Nicolaes Beresteyn was his
accomplice and had callously sacrificed his innocent sister to the
success of his friend's schemes.

If out of this network of intrigues a sensible philosopher did not
succeed in consolidating his independence with the aid of a substantial
fortune, then he was neither so keen nor so daring as his friends and he
himself supposed!

And Gilda wondered what went on in his mind for those twinkli