The Lord of Stoutenburg had walked rapidly to the hut where he hoped to find Gilda ready to receive him. He knocked at the door and Maria opened it to him. To his infinite relief she told him that the jongejuffrouw had broken her fast and would gladly speak with him. Gilda, he thought, looked very pale and fragile in the dim light of two or three tallow candles placed in sconces about the room. There were dark circles round her eyes, and a pathetic trembling of her lips proclaimed the near presence of tears. But there was an atmosphere of peace in the tiny room, with its humble little bits of furniture and the huge earthenware stove from which the pleasing glow of a wood fire emanated and shed a cheerful radiance around. The Lord of Stoutenburg felt that here in Gilda's presence he could forget his ambitions and his crimes, the man whom he was so foully putting to death, his jealousies and even his revenge. He drew a low chair close to her and half-sitting, half-kneeling, began speaking to her as gently, as simply as his harsh voice and impatient temperament would allow. He spoke mostly about the future, only touching very casually on the pain which she had caused him by her unjust suspicions of him. Gilda listened to him in silence for awhile. She was collecting all her will-power, all her strength of purpose for the task which lay before her--the task of softening a hardened and treacherous heart, of rousing in it a spark of chivalry and of honour so that it showed mercy there where it now threatened injustice, cruelty and almost inhuman cowardice. A brave man's life was in the hands of this man, who professed love for her; and though Gilda rejected that love with contempt, she meant, womanlike, to use that love as a mainspring for the softened mood which she wished to call forth. The first thought that had broken in upon her after a brief and troubled sleep was that a brave young life would be sacrificed to-day to gratify the petty spite of a fiend. She had been persuaded yesterday that the man who--though helpless and pinioned--stood before her in all the splendour of manhood and of a magnificent personality was nothing but a common criminal--a liar, a forger and a thief. Though this thought should have made her contented, since by bringing guilt home to a man who was nothing to her, it exonerated her brother whom she loved, she had felt all night, right through the disturbing dreams which had floated through her consciousness, a leaden weight sitting upon her heart, like the sense of the committal of some great and irreparable wrong. Indeed, she felt that if here in this very place which he had filled last night with his exuberant vitality, she had to think of him as silent and cold for all eternity, such a thought would drive her mad.