“Quick!” whispers the old gentleman. “You must remain until this business is settled and I give you orders for the goods,” and hastily pushes Chester into a little waiting room just out of his private office, muttering: “The drunken fool—in the hands of a miserable, gambling debauchee. My God! poor Bodé Volcker!” Then Guy’s heart commences to throb. The place he has been put into by Niklaas has a little lattice door, through it all sound in the sanctum of the merchant can be easily heard. It has apparently been constructed and used for this very purpose, to further chances of gain and vantage over his customers by the commercial Fleming himself. Almost as Guy enters he starts astonished. For these strange words come to him in impressive but charming voice: “Señor Bodé Volcker, I have driven from Brussels post haste to bid you, as you love her, get your daughter out of Antwerp—INSTANTLY!” CHAPTER XIII. “GOOD HEAVENS! WHAT AN INTRODUCTION!” “This is a curious errand, Doña de Alva,” returns the old man, bowing to the earth. “Why do you wish my daughter out of Antwerp?” “Because the order is even now speeding from Brussels to seize upon and confine your daughter in the Spin-House.” “The Spin-House! Lieve Hemel! An honorable confinement there might do the minx good,” says the old man severely. “She has been headstrong and willful lately. Has she made some careless breach of city regulation. Perchance she has worn train longer than burghers’ daughters are permitted. We sometimes, Doña de Alva, send our headstrong daughters and even the wives of our bosom to the wholesome silence of the Spin-House in Antwerp.” “Not the part of the Spin-House I mean.” “Great heavens, you don’t mean—the place for abandoned women—the harlots of the town?” gasps Bodé Volcker. “Yes.” “Merciful God! With the fearful scourging of welcome and farewell they give to those poor creatures?” “Yes.” “My Mina!” shrieks the old man. “My Mina!” wringing his hands in despair. Then he cries: “For what crime?—for what crime do they send my daughter to be disgraced and tortured—what crime?” “She is the affianced bride of Antony Oliver, the traitor.” “Oliver, your father’s under-secretary?” “Yes. It is thought she must have known his sedition. Oliver fled from Brussels yesterday. Get your daughter out of Antwerp. I won’t have a woman, innocent or guilty, so degraded and debased,” goes on Hermoine, almost desperately herself, for the old man is sobbing and wringing his hands, and seems incapable of action. But this stings the Flemish father into rage. His tears vanish. His eyes blaze. He rises before the beautiful daughter of the man who would degrade his child and mutters: “But your father who does this thing, Alva, the tyrant, the coward, the oppressor—”