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Updated: July 27, 2025
Here was the spot where she had stood on the day of the ice carnival, when that woman who was called Martha the Mare, and who said that she had known her father, had spoken to her. On that water she had galloped in Montalvo's sledge, and up yonder canal the race was run.
"Look, Carolus van Hout's daughter and Juan Montalvo's wife; those who have seen me once do not forget me." Lysbeth sat up on the bed and stared at the gaunt, powerful form, the deep-set grey eyes, the wide-spread nostrils, the scarred, high cheek-bones, the teeth made prominent by some devil's work upon the lips, and the grizzled lock of hair that hung across the forehead.
There existed no real reason why he should have done so, as he was only a civilian engaged in business, but Pieter van de Werff chanced to be a provident young man who knew many things might happen which could not precisely be foreseen. As it fell out in after years, a time came when he was able to put Montalvo's advice to good use.
But things had gone so horribly wrong, and as for Dirk, he was the most exasperating person in the world. It was owing to his bad management and lack of readiness that her name was coupled with Montalvo's at every table in Leyden.
Before he was halfway down the street he had forgotten all about the sonnet and the lovely Isabella. His was a curious temperament, and this sentimentality, born of vainness and idle hours, by no means expressed it all. That he was what we should nowadays call a prig we know, and also that he possessed his father's, Montalvo's, readiness of speech without his father's sense of humour.
Next, in a fateful sequence followed all the other incidents of that hideous carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a foul; the dreadful nightmare vision called into her mind by the look upon Montalvo's face; the trial of the Mare, her own unpremeditated but indelible perjury; the lonely drive with the man who compelled her to it; the exhibition of herself before all the world as his willing companion; and the feast in which he appeared as her cavalier, and was accepted of the simple company almost as an angel entertained by chance.
She was free, she was not Montalvo's wife, never again could she be obliged to see him, never again could she be forced to endure the contamination of his touch that was her thought. She was sure that the story was true; were it not true who could have moved the authorities to take action against him?
But whatever she felt Lysbeth showed nothing of it in her face, which remained white and stern; moreover, even before she looked at him she was aware that he feared her more than she feared him. It was true, for from this woman's eyes went out a sword of terror that seemed to pierce Montalvo's heart.
Never in his life before had he troubled over or been troubled by tales of spirits, yet now he remembered Montalvo's remark about a ghost, and of a surety he felt as though one were with him there.
Apparently he accepted Montalvo's explanation; at least he said that he, too, saw the red-cloaked girl, and was glad that nothing serious had come of the mischance. As regarded the proposed deal, he should be most happy to go into it upon the lines mentioned, as the grey, although a very good horse, was aged, and he thought the barb one of the most beautiful animals that he had ever seen.
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