Therefore, Elder Semple’s implication had stunned him like a buffet.  In his own room, he sat down on a big oak chest; and, as he thought, his wrath slowly gathered.  Semple knew that gay young English officers were coming and going about his house, and he had not told him until he feared they would interfere with his own plans for keeping Neil near to him.  The beautiful little Dutch maiden had been an attraction which he was proud to exhibit, just as he was proud of his imported furniture, his pictures, and his library.  He remembered that Semple had spoken with touching emphasis of his longing to keep his last son near home; but must he give up his darling Katherine to further this plan?

“I like not it,” he muttered.  “God for the Dutchman made the Dutchwoman.  That is the right way; but I will not make angry myself for so much of passion, so much of nothing at all to the purpose.  That is the truth.  Always I have found it so.”

Then Lysbet, having finished her second locking up, entered the room.  She came in as one wearied and troubled, and said with a sigh, as she untied her apron, “By the girls’ bedside I stopped one minute.  Dear me! when one is young, the sleep is sound.”

“Well, then, they were awake when I passed,—­that is not so much as one quarter of the hour,—­talking and laughing; I heard them.”

“And now they are fast in sleep; their heads are on one pillow, and Katherine’s hand is fast clasped in Joanna’s hand.  The dear ones!  Joris, the elder’s words have made trouble in my heart.  What did the man mean?”

“Who can tell?  What a man says, we know; but only God understands what he means.  But I will say this, Lysbet, and it is what I mean:  if Semple has led my daughter into the way of temptation, then, for all that is past and gone, we shall be unfriends.”

“Give yourself no kommer on that matter, Joris.  Why should not our girls see what kind of people the world is made of?  Have not some of our best maidens married into the English set?  And none of them were as beautiful as Katherine.  There is no harm, I think, in a girl taking a few steps up when she puts on the wedding ring.”

“Mean you that our little daughter should marry some English good-for-nothing?  Look, then, I would rather see her white and cold in the dead-chamber.  In a word, I will have no Englishman among the Van Heemskirks.  There, let us sleep.  To-night I will speak no more.”

But madam could not sleep.  She was quite sensible that she had tacitly encouraged Katherine’s visits to Semple House, even after she understood that Captain Hyde and other fashionable and notable persons were frequent visitors there.  In her heart she had dreamed such dreams of social advancement for her daughters as most mothers encourage.  Her prejudices were less deep than those of her husband; or, perhaps, they were more powerfully combated by her greater respect for the pomps and vanities of