IV + 

Amongst all those here present, Gilda was the only one who scented some unseen danger for them all in Nicolaes’ strangely feverish haste. What the others took for zeal, she knew by instinct was naught but treachery. What form this would take she could not guess; but this she knew, that for some motive as sinister as it was unexplainable, Nicolaes did not wish the Stadtholder and his messenger to meet. That same motive had caused him to utter all those venomous accusations against her husband, and was even now wearing him into a state of fretfulness which bordered on dementia. + 

“My lord!” she cried out to her beloved at one time; and felt that even through all the din and clatter her voice had reached his ear, for he raised his head, and it even seemed to her as if his eyes met hers above the intervening crowd and as if the supernal longing for him which was in her heart had drawn him with its mystic power over every obtruding obstacle. + 

For, indeed, the next moment he was right at the foot of the steps, not five paces from the Stadtholder. + 

Nicolaes spied him in a moment, and a loud curse broke from his lips. + 

“That skulking assassin!” he cried; and with a magnificent gesture covered the Stadtholder with his body. “To horse, your Highness, and leave me to deal with him!” + 

Maurice of Nassau, indeed was one of the bravest men of his time, but the word “assassin” was bound to ring unpleasantly in the ears of a man whose father had met his death at a murderer’s hand. Half-ashamed of his fears, he nevertheless did take advantage of Nicolaes’ theatrical attitude to slip behind him and mount his horse as quickly as he could. But with his foot already in the stirrup compunction appeared to seize him. Wishing to palliate the gross insult which was being hurled at the man who had once saved his life at imminent peril of his own, he now turned and called to him in gracious, matter-of-fact tones: + 

“Why, man, what made you tarry so long? Come with us to Utrecht now. We can no longer wait.” + 

With this he swung himself in the saddle. + 

“Not another step man, at your peril!” + 

This came from Nicolaes Beresteyn, who was still standing in a dramatic pose between Diogenes and the Stadtholder, with his cloak wrapped around his arm. + 

“Stand back, you fool!!” retorted the other loudly, and would have pushed past him, when suddenly Nicolaes disengaged his arm from his cloak wrapped around his arm. + 

For one fraction of a second the gleam of steel flashed in the humid air; then, without a word of warning, swift as a hawk descending on his prey, he struck at Diogenes with all his might. + 

It had all happened in a very few brief seconds. Diogenes, spent with fatigue, or actually struck, staggered and half fell against the bottom step. But Gilda, with a loud cry, was already by his side, and as Nicolaes raised his arm to strike once again, she was on him like some lithe pantheress. + 

She seized his wrist, and gave it such a violent twist that he uttered a cry of pain, and the dagger fell with a clatter to the ground. After which everything became a blur. She heard her brother’s loudly triumphant shout: + 

“His Highness’s life was threatened. Mine was but an act of justice!” even as he in his turn swung himself into the saddle. + 