“Stay.  To me listen.  Not one guilder will I give to my daughter, if”—­

“To the devil with your guilders!  Dirty money made in dirty traffic”—­

“You lie!”

“Sir, you take an infamous advantage.  You know, that, being Katherine’s father, I will not challenge you.”

“Christus!!” roared Joris, “challenge me one hundred times.  A fool I would be to answer you.  Life my God gave to me.  Well, then, only my God shall from me take it.  See you these arms and hands?  In them you will be as the child of one year.  Ere beyond my reason you move me, go!” and he strode to the door and flung it open with a passion that made every one in the store straighten themselves, and look curiously toward the two men.

White with rage, and with his hand upon his sword-hilt, Captain Hyde stamped his way through the crowded store to the dusty street.  Then it struck him that he had not asked the name of the man to whom Katharine was promised.  He swore at himself for the omission.  Whether he knew him or not, he was determined to fight him.  In the meantime, the most practical revenge was to try and see Katherine before her father had the opportunity to give her any orders regarding him.  Just then he met Neil Semple, and he stopped and asked him the time.

“It will be the half hour after four, Captain.  I am going home; shall I have your company, sir?”

“I have not much leisure to-night.  Make a thousand regrets to Madam Semple and my aunt for me.”

Neil’s calm, complacent gravity was unendurable.  He turned from him abruptly, and, muttering passionate exclamations, went to the river-bank for a boat.  Often he had seen Katherine between five and six o’clock at the foot of the Van Heemskirk garden; for it was then possible for her to slip away while madam was busy about her house, and Joanna and Batavius talking over their own affairs.  And this evening he felt that the very intensity of his desire must surely bring her to their trysting-place behind the lilac hedge.

Whether he was right or wrong, he did not consider; for he was not one of those potent men who have themselves in their own power.  Nor had it ever entered his mind that “love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice,” or that the only love worthy of the name refuses to blend with anything that is low or vindictive or clandestine.  And, even if he had not loved Katherine, he would now have been determined to marry her.  Never before in all his life had he found an object so engrossing.  Pride and revenge were added to love, as motives; but who will say that love was purer or stronger or sweeter for them?