The interior of the room as he entered it made an attractive picture which even in his hurry caught Foy’s eye and fixed itself so firmly in his mind that he never forgot its details.  To begin with, the place was beautifully furnished, for his brother had a really good taste in tapestry, pictures, and other such adornments.  Adrian himself lay upon a richly carved oak bed, pale from loss of blood, but otherwise little the worse.  Seated by the side of the bed, looking wonderfully sweet in the lamplight, which cast shadows from the curling hair about her brows on to the delicate face beneath, was Elsa Brant.  She had been reading to Adrian from a book of Spanish chivalry such as his romantic soul loved, and he, resting on his elbow in the snowy bed, was contemplating her beauty with his languishing black eyes.  Yet, although he only saw her for a moment before she heard his entry and looked up, it was obvious to Foy that Elsa remained quite unconscious of the handsome Adrian’s admiration, indeed, that her mind wandered far away from the magnificent adventures and highly coloured love scenes of which she was reading in her sweet, low voice.  Nor was he mistaken, for, in fact, the poor child was thinking of her father.

At the further end of the room, talking together earnestly in the deep and curtained window-place, stood his mother and his father.  Clearly they were as much preoccupied as the younger couple, and it was not difficult for Foy to guess that fears for his own safety upon his perilous errand were what concerned them most, and behind them other unnumbered fears.  For the dwellers in the Netherlands in those days must walk from year to year through a valley of shadows so grim that our imagination can scarcely picture them.

“Sixty hours and he is not back,” Lysbeth was saying.

“Martin said we were not to trouble ourselves before they had been gone for a hundred,” answered Dirk consolingly.

Just then Foy, surveying them from the shadowed doorway, stepped forward, saying in his jovial voice: 

“Sixty hours to the very minute.”

Lysbeth uttered a little scream of joy and ran forward.  Elsa let the book fall on to the floor and rose to do the same, then remembered and stood still, while Dirk remained where he was till the women had done their greetings, betraying his delight only by a quick rubbing of his hands.  Adrian alone did not look particularly pleased, not, however, because he retained any special grudge against his brother for his share in the fracas of a few nights before, since, when once his furious gusts of temper had passed, he was no malevolently minded man.  Indeed he was glad that Foy had come back safe from his dangerous adventure, only he wished that he would not blunder into the bedroom and interrupt his delightful occupation of listening, while the beautiful Elsa read him romance and poetry.