“Juan de Montalvo,” she said in a low voice, “your wickedness has won and for Dirk’s sake my person and my goods must pay its price. So be it since so it must be, but listen. I make no prophecies about you; I do not say that this or that shall happen to you, but I call down upon you the curse of God and the execration of men.” Then she threw up her hands and began to pray. “God, Whom it has pleased that I should be given to a fate far worse than death; O God, blast the mind and the soul of this monster. Let him henceforth never know a peaceful hour; let misfortune come upon him through me and mine; let fears haunt his sleep. Let him live in heavy labour and die in blood and misery, and through me; and if I bear children to him, let the evil be upon them also.” She ceased. Montalvo looked at her and tried to speak. Again he looked and again he tried to speak, but no words would come. Then the fear of Lysbeth van Hout fell upon him, that fear which was to haunt him all his life. He turned and crept from the room, and his face was like the face of an old man, nor, notwithstanding the height of his immediate success, could his heart have been more heavy if Lysbeth had been an angel sent straight from Heaven to proclaim to him the unalterable doom of God. CHAPTER VII HENDRIK BRANT HAS A VISITOR Nine months had gone by, and for more then eight of them Lysbeth had been known as the Countess Juan de Montalvo. Indeed of this there could be no doubt, since she was married with some ceremony by the Bishop in the Groote Kerk before the eyes of all men. Folk had wondered much at these hurried nuptials, though some of the more ill-natured shrugged their shoulders and said that when a young woman had compromised herself by long and lonely drives with a Spanish cavalier, and was in consequence dropped by her own admirer, why the best thing she could do was to marry as soon as possible. So the pair, who looked handsome enough before the altar, were wed, and went to taste of such nuptial bliss as was reserved for them in Lysbeth’s comfortable house in the Bree Straat. Here they lived almost alone, for Lysbeth’s countrymen and women showed their disapproval of her conduct by avoiding her company, and, for reasons of his own, Montalvo did not encourage the visiting of Spaniards at his house. Moreover, the servants were changed, while Tante Clara and the girl Greta had also disappeared. Indeed, Lysbeth, finding out the false part which they had played towards her, dismissed them both before her marriage.