The self-styled Countess knew all this, and, as the sequel shows, knew her man. She was 40, had been beautiful, was still comely, with good figure, fair-haired, but with steel-blue eyes. She spoke many languages and had dwelt in every land from Petersburg to Paris. It is needless to tell how they first met or of the intimacy that sprang up between them, but I will merely say in passing that within five days of their first meeting he had given her a magnificent diamond bracelet, which had been in his family more than a century. This alarmed his two daughters, who were terrified at the mere suspicion that their father was in earnest, and might possibly present them with a stepmother, above all, a comparatively young stepmother, and, so far as physique went, a magnificent animal, with promise of a long life--so long that her rights of dower would make a cut in the Van Tromp estates and treasures, which might well cause the old Admiral to rouse himself from his three-century sleep in Dordrecht Church and once more walk these glimpses of the moon in protest of the sacrilege. Then the scandal of a Countess-adventuress becoming a Van Tromp--head of that family, too! They knew of his penchant for the Countess, and cared nothing for it, until, with a feeling akin to horror they observed at the dress ball one night the Countess airing the historic bracelet. It would require a volume to relate the scenes that followed in the Van Tromp domicile on this paralyzing discovery; but prayers, tears and histrionic touches were all met by the stolid reply of Van Tromp: "I please myself."