For a moment Lysbeth stood thinking. Alas! she could see no possible escape, she was in the toils, the rope was about her throat. Either she must obey or, so she thought, she must give the man she loved to a dreadful death. For his sake she would do it, for his sake and might God forgive her! Might God avenge her and him! Another instant and there came a knock upon the door. She opened it. “The Heer van Goorl stands below,” said the voice of Greta, “wishing to see you, madam.” “Admit him,” answered Lysbeth, and going to a chair almost in the centre of the room, she seated herself. Presently Dirk’s step sounded on the stair, that known, beloved step for which so often she had listened eagerly. Again the door opened and Greta announced the Heer van Goorl. That she could not see the Captain Montalvo evidently surprised the woman, for her eyes roamed round the room wonderingly, but she was too well trained, or too well bribed, to show her astonishment. Gentlemen of this kidney, as Greta had from time to time remarked, have a faculty for vanishing upon occasion. So Dirk walked into the fateful chamber as some innocent and unsuspecting creature walks into a bitter snare, little knowing that the lady whom he loved and whom he came to win was set as a bait to ruin him. “Be seated, cousin,” said Lysbeth, in a voice so forced and strained that it caused him to look up. But he saw nothing, for her head was turned away from him, and for the rest his mind was too preoccupied to be observant. By nature simple and open, it would have taken much to wake Dirk into suspicion in the home and presence of his love and cousin, Lysbeth. “Good day to you, Lysbeth,” he said awkwardly; “why, how cold your hand is! I have been trying to find you for some time, but you have always been out or away, leaving no address.” “I have been to the sea with my Aunt Clara,” she answered. Then for a while—five minutes or more—there followed a strained and stilted conversation. “Will the booby never come to the point?” reflected Montalvo, surveying him through a join in the tapestry. “By the Saints, what a fool he looks!” “Lysbeth,” said Dirk at last, “I want to speak to you.” “Speak on, cousin,” she answered. “Lysbeth, I—I—have loved you for a long while, and I—have come to ask you to marry me. I have put it off for a year or more for reasons which I hope to tell you some day, but I can keep silent no longer, especially now when I see that a much finer gentleman is trying to win you—I mean the Spanish Count, Montalvo,” he added with a jerk. She said nothing in reply. So Dirk went on pouring out all his honest passion in words that momentarily gathered weight and strength, till at length they were eloquent enough. He told her how since first they met he had loved her and only her, and how his one desire in life was to make her happy and be happy with her. Pausing at length he began to speak of his prospects—then she stopped him.