She bit her lip with vexation. The miserable wretch was obviously not satisfied with the amount which she had named as payment for his services, and he played some weak part of chivalry and of honour in order to make his work appear more difficult, and to extract a more substantial reward from her. She tried to put into the glance which she now threw on him all the contempt which she felt and which truly nauseated her at this moment. Unfortunately she had need of him, she could not start for Delft alone, marauders and footpads would stop her ever reaching that city. Could she have gone alone she were not here now craving the help of a man whom she despised. "Meseems," she said coldly after a slight pause, "that you do wilfully misunderstand our mutual positions. I am not asking you to do anything which could offend your strangely susceptible honour, whose vagaries, I own, I am unable to follow. Will 10,000 guilders satisfy your erratic conscience? or did you receive more than that for laying hands on two helpless women and dragging one--who has never done you any wrong--to a depth of shame and sorrow which you cannot possibly fathom?" "My conscience, mejuffrouw," he replied, seemingly quite unperturbed at her contemptuous glance and insulting speech, "is, as you say, somewhat erratic. For the moment it refuses to consider the possibility of escorting you to Delft unless I know what it is that you desire to say to the Prince of Orange." "If it is a question of price...." "It is not a question of price, mejuffrouw," he broke in firmly, "let us, an you will allow it, call it a question of mine erratic conscience." "I am rich, sir ... my private fortune...." "Do not name it, mejuffrouw," he said jovially, "the sound of it would stagger a poor man who has to scrape up a living as best he can." "Forty thousand guilders, sir," she said pleading once more eagerly, "an you will take me to Delft to-morrow." "Were it ten hundred thousand, mejuffrouw, I would not do it unless I knew what you wished to say to the Stadtholder." "Sir, can I not move you," she implored, "this means more to me than I can hope to tell you." Once again her pride had given way before this new and awful fear that her errand would be in vain, that she had come here as a suppliant before this rogue, that she had humbled her dignity, entreated him, almost knelt to him, and that he, for some base reason which she could not understand, meant to give himself the satisfaction of refusing the fortune which she did promise him. "Can I not move you," she reiterated, appealing yet more earnestly, for, womanlike, she could not forget that moment awhile ago, when he had knelt instinctively before her, when the irony had gone from his smile, and the laughter in his mocking eyes had yielded to an inward glow. He shook his head, but remained unmoved. "I cannot tell you, sir," she urged plaintively, "what I would say to the Prince." "Is it so deadly a secret then?" he asked.