Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
"Cannot you speak?" he asked at last and savagely. "Do you think it is pleasant for a man to sit opposite a woman who looks like a corpse in her coffin till he wishes she were one?" "So do I," answered Lysbeth, and again there was silence. Presently she broke it. "What do you want?" she asked. "More money?" "Of course I want money," he answered furiously.
Foy, to-morrow at dawn you and Martin will start for The Hague to carry out the command of your cousin Brant." "Why should my son's life be risked on this mad errand?" asked Lysbeth. "Because it is a duty, mother," answered Foy cheerfully, although he tried to look depressed. He was young and enterprising; moreover, the adventure promised to be full of novelty.
Perhaps the Count did not wish to listen to condolences on his defeat, or perhaps he desired to prolong the tete-a-tete with his fair passenger. At any rate, without further hesitation, he struck his weary horse with the whip, causing it to amble forward somewhat stiffly but at a good pace. "Where are we going, Senor?" asked Lysbeth anxiously. "The race is over and I must seek my friends."
She knew the man had she not lived with him? and there could be no doubt about it, and he was the new governor of the Gevangenhuis. Doubtless he has purchased that post for his own dark purposes and to be near them. Sick and half blind with the intensity of her dread, Lysbeth staggered home.
"Sixty hours and he is not back," Lysbeth was saying. "Martin said we were not to trouble ourselves before they had been gone for a hundred," answered Dirk consolingly. Just then Foy, surveying them from the shadowed doorway, stepped forward, saying in his jovial voice: "Sixty hours to the very minute." Lysbeth uttered a little scream of joy and ran forward.
Dirk would be saved from extinction for which he should be grateful: Lysbeth, besides earning the honour of an alliance, perhaps only temporary, with himself, would be able to go through life wrapped in a heavenly glow of virtue arising from the impression that she had really done something very fine and tragic, while he, Montalvo, under Providence, the humble purveyor of these blessings, would also benefit to some small extent.
No one can marry a dead woman, and Lysbeth was scarcely likely to leave a will in his favour. It seemed that what troubled her particularly was the fear lest the young man should think her conduct light. Well, why should she not give him a reason which he would be the first to acknowledge as excellent for breaking with him?
All this time Lysbeth sat in a carved oak chair listening with a stony face to the tale of her own shame and betrayal. She made no sign at all beyond a little twitching of her fingers, till Foy, guessing what she suffered in her heart, suddenly went to his mother and kissed her.
Nine months had gone by, and for more then eight of them Lysbeth had been known as the Countess Juan de Montalvo. Indeed of this there could be no doubt, since she was married with some ceremony by the Bishop in the Groote Kerk before the eyes of all men.
The scene seemed so charming and so happy that Lysbeth, who was young, and now that she had recovered from the shock of her beloved father's death, light-hearted, ceased her forward movement and poised herself upon her skates to watch it for a space.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking