After taking off his armour, washing the blood from his wounds and having them bound up, and attiring himself in a suit lent him by the captain until he should get to Delft, where he had left his valise, Ned partook of a good meal, for he had taken nothing but a manchet of bread and a cup of wine since the previous night. He then went into the cabin and spent the evening in conversation with the countess and her daughter, the latter of whom had changed since they had last met to the full as much as he had himself done. She had been a girl of fourteen--slim and somewhat tall for her age, and looking pale and delicate from the life of confinement and anxiety they had led at Brussels, and their still greater anxiety at Maastricht. She was now budding into womanhood. Her figure was lissome and graceful, her face was thoughtful and intelligent, and gave promise of rare beauty in another year or two. He learned that they had remained for a time in the village to which they had first gone, and had then moved to another a few miles away, and had there lived quietly in a small house placed at their disposal by one of their friends. Here they had remained unmolested until two months before, when the excesses committed throughout the country by the mutinous soldiery rendered it unsafe for anyone to live outside the walls of the town. They then removed to Antwerp, where there was far more religious toleration than at Brussels; and the countess had resumed her own name, though still living in complete retirement in the house in which Ned had so fortunately found her. "The times have altered me for the better," the countess said. "The Spaniards have retired from that part of Friesland where some of my estates are situated, and those to whom Alva granted them have had to fly. I have a faithful steward there, and since they have left he has collected the rents and has remitted to me such portions as I required, sending over the rest to England to the charge of a banker there. As it may be that the Spaniards will again sweep over Friesland, where they still hold some of the principal towns, I thought it best, instead of having my money placed in Holland, where no one can foresee the future, to send it to England, where at least one can find a refuge and a right to exercise our religion." "I would that you would go there at once, countess; for surely at present Holland is no place for two unprotected ladies. Nothing would give my mother greater pleasure than to receive you until you can find a suitable home for yourselves. My sisters are but little older than your daughter, and would do all in their power to make her at home. They too speak your language, and there are thousands of your compatriots in London." "What do you say, Gertrude?" the countess asked. "But I know that your mind has been so long made up that it is needless to question you."