Handsome as he might be, Adrian had no attractions for Elsa.  About him there was something too exaggerated for her taste; moreover he was Spanish, Spanish in his beauty, Spanish in the cast of his mind, and all Spaniards were hateful to her.  Deep down in her heart also lay a second reason for this repugnance; the man reminded her of another man who for months had been a nightmare to her soul, the Hague spy, Ramiro.  This Ramiro she had observed closely.  Though she had not seen him very often his terrible reputation was familiar to her.  She knew also, for her father had told her as much, that it was he who was drawing the nets about him at The Hague, and who plotted day and night to rob him of his wealth.

At first sight there was no great resemblance between the pair.  How could there be indeed between a man on the wrong side of middle age, one-eyed, grizzled, battered, and bearing about with him an atmosphere of iniquity, and a young gentleman, handsome, distinguished, and wayward, but assuredly no criminal?  Yet the likeness existed.  She had seen it first when Adrian was pointing out to her how, were he a general, he would dispose his forces for the capture of Leyden, and from that moment her nature rose in arms against him.  Also it came out in other ways, in little tricks of voice and pomposities of manner which Elsa caught at unexpected moments, perhaps, as she told herself, because she had trained her mind to seek these similarities.  Yet all the while she knew that the fancy was ridiculous, for what could these two men have in common with each other?

In those days, however, Elsa did not think much of Adrian, or of anybody except her beloved father, whose only child she was, and whom she adored with all the passion of her heart.  She knew the terrible danger in which he stood, and guessed that she had been sent away that she should not share his perils.  Now she had but one desire and one prayer—­that he might escape in safety, and that she might return to him again.  Once only a message came from him, sent through a woman she had never seen, the wife of a fisherman, who delivered it by word of mouth.  This was the message: 

“Give my love and blessing to my daughter Elsa, and tell her that so far I am unharmed.  To Foy van Goorl say, I have heard the news.  Well done, thou good and faithful servant!  Let him remember what I told him, and be sure that he will not strive in vain, and that he shall not lack for his reward here or hereafter.”

That was all.  Tidings reached them that the destruction of so many men by the blowing up of the Swallow, and by her sinking of the Government boat as she escaped, had caused much excitement and fury among the Spaniards.  But, as those who had been blown up were free-lances, and as the boat was sunk while the Swallow was flying from them, nothing had been done in the matter.  Indeed, nothing could be done, for it was not known who manned the Swallow, and, as Ramiro had foreseen, her crew were supposed to have been destroyed with her in the Haarlemer Meer.