Lenora--whose ignorance of every law, every formality, every duty imposed upon this once free and proud country by its Spanish masters was unbounded--could not quite understand why her husband, who was the son of a high civic dignitary, had not taken care that all his papers were in order, before he embarked upon this journey. It surely had been his duty to do that, in order to save himself and his wife from the humiliation of being thus held up at a city gate by an insolent provost, who had the power to make his authority felt, and was not sparing of abuse of loutish Netherlanders who were wilfully ignorant of the law, or else impudent enough to flout it. An unpleasant quarrel between the two men would undoubtedly have ensued and would inevitably have ended in disaster for Mark, but for the intervention of Lenora who spoke to the provost in Spanish. "I am this noble gentleman’s wife," she said haughtily in response to an insolent look from the young soldier, "and the daughter of señor Juan de Vargas, who will make you responsible, sirrah, for any inconvenience you may cause me." At mention of the all-powerful and dreaded name, the provost’s manner immediately underwent a change. At the same time he was not prepared to accept the statement quite so unconditionally as Lenora had supposed. "This noble gentleman," he retorted half-sullenly, "hath no papers whereby I can verify the truth of what he asserts. He has none whereby he can prove to me that he is the son of the High-Bailiff of Ghent, and that you are his wife and the daughter of don Juan de Vargas." "You have my word for both these assertions, you accursed fool," exclaimed Mark hotly. "And I’ll make you rue your insolence, you dog of a Netherlander," retorted the provost, "and teach you how to treat a soldier of the King...." "Mark, I entreat you, not in my presence," broke in Lenora hastily, for she saw that her husband--apparently beside himself with rage--was about to commit one of those foolish and purposeless acts of violence which would have resulted for them both in a veritable chaplet of unpleasantness: imprisonment in a guard-room, bringing up before a sheriff, interrogations, abuse and insults, until the High-Bailiff or her father could be communicated with--a matter probably of two or three days, dependent on the good will of the very sheriff before whom they would appear. It was positively unthinkable. Lenora could not understand how Mark could be so foolish as to lose his temper, when he was so obviously in the wrong, nor how he could have been so thoughtless in the matter of the papers.