This announcement took every one a little by surprise.  A few were really gratified; the majority perceived that it silenced gossip of a very enthralling kind.  No one could now deplore or insinuate, or express sorrow or astonishment.  And, as rejoicing with one’s friends and neighbours soon becomes a very monotonous thing, Katherine Van Heemskirk’s fine marriage was tacitly dropped.  Only for that one day on which it was publicly declared, was it an absorbing topic.  The whole issue of the “Gazette” was quickly bought; and then people, having seen the fact with their own eyes, felt a sudden satiety of the whole affair.

On some few it had a more particular influence.  Hyde’s brother officers held high festival to their comrade’s success.  To every bumper they read the notice aloud, as a toast, and gave a kind of national triumph to what was a purely personal affair.  Joris read it with dim eyes, and then lit his long Gouda pipe and sat smoking with an air of inexpressible loneliness.  Lysbet read it, and then put the paper carefully away among the silks and satins in her bottom drawer.  Joanna read it, and then immediately bought a dozen copies and sent them to the relatives of Batavius, in Dordrecht, Holland.

Neil Sample read and re-read it.  It seemed to have a fascination for him; and for more than an hour he sat musing, with his eyes fixed upon the fateful words.  Then he rose and went to the hearth.  There were a few sticks of wood burning upon it, but they had fallen apart.  He put them together, and, tearing out the notice, he laid it upon them.  It meant much more to Neil than the destruction of a scrap of paper, and he stood watching it, long after it had become a film of grayish ash.

Bram would not read it at all.  He was too full of shame and trouble at the event; and the moments went as if they moved on lead.  But the unhappy day wore away to its evening; and after tea he gathered a great nosegay of narcissus, and went to Isaac Cohen’s.  He did not “hang about the steps,” as Joris in his temper had said.  Miriam was not one of those girls who sit in the door to be gazed at by every passing man.  He went into the store, and she seemed to know his footstep.  He had no need to speak:  she came at once from the mystery behind the crowded place into the clearer light.  Plain and dark were her garments, and Bram would have been unable to describe her dress; but it was as fitting to her as are the green leaves of the rose-tree to the rose.

Their acquaintance had evidently advanced since that anxious evening when she had urged upon Bram the intelligence of the duel between Hyde and Neil Semple; for Bram gave her the flowers without embarrassment, and she buried her sweet face in their sweet petals, and then lifted it with a smile at once grateful and confidential.  Then they began to talk of Katherine.

[Illustration:  Plain and dark were her garments]

“She was so beautiful and so kind,” said Miriam; “just a week since she passed here, with some violets in her hand; and, when she saw me, she ran up the steps, and said, ‘I have brought them for you;’ and she clasped my fingers, and looked so pleasantly in my face.  If I had a sister, Bram, I think she would smile at me in the same way.”