"If not yourself," he retorted, "you spoke of it to some one ... who went to the Stadtholder ... and warned him! to some one ... some one who.... Ah!" he cried suddenly with a loud and ghoulish scream wherein rage, horror and fear and a kind of savage triumph too rang out, "I see that I have guessed aright. You did speak of what you knew ... to the miserable knave whom Nicolaes paid to outrage you ... and you offered him money to betray your own brother." "It is false!" "It is true--I can read it in your face. That man went to Delft yesterday--he was captured by Jan on his way back to Rotterdam. He had fulfilled your errand and warned the Prince of Orange and delivered me and all my friends into hands that never have known mercy." He was blind with passion now and looked on her with bloodshot eyes that threatened to kill. But Gilda was not cast in the same mould as was this traitor. Baffled in his crime, fear had completely unmanned him, but with every cry of rage uttered by Stoutenburg she became more calm and less afraid. "Once more, my lord," she said quietly in the brief interval of Stoutenburg's ravings and while he was forced to draw breath, "do I pledge my word to you that I had no hand in saving the Stadtholder's life. That God chose for this another instrument than I, I do thank Him on my knees." While she spoke Stoutenburg had made a quick effort to regain some semblance of composure, and now he contrived to say quite calmly and with an evil sneer upon his face: "That instrument of God is an I mistake not tied to a post with ropes like an ox ready for the butcher's hand. Though I have but sorry chances of escape myself and every minute hath become precious, I can at least spend five in making sure that his fate at any rate be sorrier than mine." Her face became if possible even paler than before. "What do you mean to do?" she murmured. "The man who has betrayed me to the Prince of Orange is the same man who laid hands upon you in Haarlem--is that not so?" "I cannot say," she said firmly. "The same man who was here in this room yesterday, bound and pinioned before you?" he insisted. "I do not know." "Will you swear then that you never spoke to him of the Prince of Orange, and of our plans?" "Not of your plans ..." she protested calmly. "You see that you cannot deny it, Gilda," he continued with that same unnatural calm which seemed to her far more horrible than his rage had been before. "Willingly or unwittingly you let that man know what you overheard in the Groote Kerk on New Year's Eve. Then you bribed him into warning the Prince of Orange, since you could not do it yourself." "It is false," she reiterated wildly. Once more that evil sneer distorted his pale face.