Bewildered, wide-eyed, Gilda listened to him. In all her life hitherto, she had never come into contact with lying and with deceit: she had never seen a man lying unblushingly, calmly, not showing signs of confusion or of fear. Therefore, the thought that this man could be talking so calmly, so simply, so logically, and yet be trying to deceive her, never for one moment entered her head. The events of the past few days crowded in upon her brain in such a maddening array, that, as she sat here now, face to face with the man whom she had been so ready to suspect, she could not disentangle from those events one single fact that could justify her suspicions. Even looking back upon the conversation which she had had with that impudent rogue in Leyden and again last night, she distinctly remembered now that he had never really said a single thing that implicated the Lord of Stoutenburg or anyone else in this villainy. She certainly was bewildered and very puzzled now: joy at the thought that after all the Stadtholder was safe, joy that her brother's hand would not be stained with murder, or his honour with treachery, mingled with a vague sense of mistrust which she was powerless to combat, yet felt ashamed to admit. "Then, my lord," she murmured at last, "do you really tell me that the outrage of which I have been the victim was merely planned by villains, for mercenary motives?" "What else could have prompted it?" he asked blandly. "Neither you ... nor ... nor any of your friends had a hand in it?" she insisted. "I?" he exclaimed with a look of profound horror. "I?... to do you such a wrong! For what purpose, ye gods?" "To ... to keep me out of the way...." "I understand," he said simply. "And you, Gilda, believed this of me?" "I believed it," she replied calmly. "You did not realize then that I would give every drop of my blood to save you one instant's pain?" "I did not realize," she said more coldly, "that you would give up your ambition for any woman or for anything." "You do not believe then, that I love you?" "Speak not of love, my lord," she retorted, "it is a sacred thing. And you methinks do not know what love is." "Indeed you are right, Gilda," he said, "I do not know what is the love of ordinary men. But if to love you, Gilda, means that every thought, every hope, every prayer is centred upon you, if it means that neither sleep nor work, nor danger can for one single instant chase your image from my soul, if to love you means that my very sinews ache with the longing to hold you in my arms, and that every moment which keeps me from your side is torture worse than hell; if love means all that, Gilda, then do I know to mine own hurt what love is." "And in your ambition, my lord, you allowed that love to be smothered," she retorted calmly. "It is too late now to speak of it again, to any woman save to Walburg de Marnix."