"I would like the jongejuffrouw to have something to eat and drink," came once more in whispers from out the darkness. "I fear that she will be faint!" "No! no!" came the prompt, peremptory reply, "it would be madness to let her realize so soon where she is. She knows this place well." A halt on the way to Leyden! and thence a further journey by sledge! Gilda's thoughts were distinctly less chaotic already. She was beginning to marshal them up in her mind, together with her recollections of the events of the past twenty-four hours. The darkness around her, which was intense, and the numbness of her body all helped her to concentrate her faculties on these recollections first and on the obvious conclusions based upon her position at the present moment. She was being silenced effectually because of the knowledge which she had gained in the cathedral last night. The Lord of Stoutenburg, frightened for his plans, was causing her to be put out of his way. Never for a moment did she suspect her own brother in this. It was that conscienceless, ambitious, treacherous Stoutenburg! at most her brother was blindly acquiescent in this infamy. Gilda was not afraid. Not even when this conviction became fully matured in her mind. She was not afraid for herself, although for one brief moment the thought did cross her mind that mayhap she had only been taken out of Haarlem in order that her death might be more secretly encompassed. But she was cast in a firmer mould than most women of her rank and wealth would be. She came of a race that had faced misery, death and torture for over a century for the sake of its own independence of life and of faith, and was ready to continue the struggle for another hundred years if need be for the same ideals, and making the same sacrifices in order to attain them. Gilda Beresteyn gave but little thought to her own safety. Life to her, if Stoutenburg's dastardly conspiracy against the Stadtholder was successful and involved her own brother, would be of little value to her. Nicolaes' act of treachery would break her father's heart; what matter if she herself lived to witness all that misery or not. No! it was her helplessness at this moment that caused her the most excruciating soul-agony. She had been trapped and was being cast aside like a noxious beast, that is in the way of men. Like a child that is unruly and has listened at the keyhole of the door, she was being punished and rendered harmless. Indeed she had no fear for her safety; the few words which she had heard, the presence of Maria, all tended to point out that there would be no direct attempt against her life. It was only of that awful crime that she thought, that crime which she had so fondly hoped that she might yet frustrate: it was of the Stadtholder's safety that she thought and of her brother's sin.