Laurence rose and dried his tears. He felt that they had been unmanly, and was half ashamed of them. Fortunately it was only his mother who had seen them, and ... how well she understood! "I must think it all over, mother dear," he said calmly. "It is early yet. Father will not want me to be at the Town-house before eight o’clock. Oh! how could he ever have been so mean, so obsequious as to agree to this selling of his son in such a shameful market." "How could he help it?" retorted the mother with a fretful little sigh. "The Duke of Alva commanded in the name of the King, and threatened us all with the Inquisition if we disobeyed. You know what that means," she added, whilst that pitiable look of horror and fear once more crept into her eyes. "Sometimes I think," said Laurence sombrely--he was standing in front of the fire and staring into the crackling logs with a deep frown right across his brow--"sometimes I think that the worst tortures which those devils could inflict on us would be more endurable than this life of constant misery and humiliation." The mother made no reply. Her wan cheeks had become the colour of ashes, her thin hands which were resting in her lap were seized with a nervous tremour. From below came still the sound of loud laughter intermixed now with a bibulous song. A smothered cry of rage escaped Laurence’s lips: it seemed as if he could not stay still, as if he must run and stop this insult in his mother’s house, silence those brawling soldiers, force their own obscene songs down their throats, regardless of the terrible reprisals which might ensue. Only his mother’s thin, trembling hand upon his arm forced him to remain, and to swallow his resentment as best he could. "It is no use, Laurence," she murmured, "and I would be the first to suffer." This argument had the effect of forcing Laurence van Rycke to control his raging temper. Common sense came momentarily to the rescue and told him that his mother was right. He started pacing up and down the narrow room with a view to calming his nerves. II "Have you seen Mark this morning?" asked Clémence van Rycke suddenly. "No," he replied, "have you?" "Only for a moment." "What had he to say?" "Oh! you know Mark’s way," she replied evasively. "It seems that he caught sight of donna Lenora de Vargas when she passed through the Waalpoort yesterday. He made a flippant joke or two about your good luck and the girl’s beauty." Laurence suppressed an angry oath. "Don’t blame Mark," interposed Clémence van Rycke gently, "he is as God made him--shallow, careless..." "Not careless where his own pleasures are concerned," said Laurence, with a laugh of bitter contempt. "Last night at the ’Three Weavers’ a lot of Spanish officers held carouse. Mark was with them till far into the night. There was heavy drinking and high play, and Mark..."