As he finished reading through the paper the new governor looked up, to see, perhaps, what impression he had produced upon his audience.  Now Elsa saw his face for the first time and gripped Lysbeth’s arm.

“It is Ramiro,” she whispered, “Ramiro the spy, the man who dogged my father at The Hague.”

As well might she have spoken to a statue.  Indeed, of a sudden Lysbeth seemed to be smitten into stone, for there she stood staring with a blanched and meaningless face at the face of the man opposite to her.  Well might she stare, for she also knew him.  Across the gulf of years, one-eyed, bearded, withered, scarred as he was by suffering, passion and evil thoughts, she knew him, for there before her stood one whom she deemed dead, the wretch whom she had believed to be her husband, Juan de Montalvo.  Some magnetism drew his gaze to her; out of all the faces of that crowd it was hers that leapt to his eye.  He trembled and grew white; he turned away, and swiftly was gone back into the hell of the Gevangenhuis.  Like a demon he had come out of it to survey the human world beyond, and search for victims there; like a demon he went back into his own place.  So at least it seemed to Lysbeth.

“Come, come,” she muttered and, drawing the girl with her, passed out of the crowd.

Elsa began to talk in a strained voice that from time to time broke into a sob.

“That is the man,” she said.  “He hounded down my father; it was his wealth he wanted, but my father swore that he would die before he should win it, and he is dead—­dead in the Inquisition, and that man is his murderer.”

Lysbeth made no answer, never a word she uttered, till presently they halted at a mean and humble door.  Then she spoke for the first time in cold and constrained accents.

“I am going in here to visit the Vrouw Jansen; you have heard of her, the wife of him whom they burned.  She sent to me to say that she is sick, I know not of what, but there is smallpox about; I have heard of four cases of it in the city, so, cousin, it is wisest that you should not enter here.  Give me the basket with the food and wine.  Look, yonder is the factory, quite close at hand, and there you will find Foy.  Oh! never mind Ramiro.  What is done is done.  Go and walk with Foy, and for a while forget—­Ramiro.”

At the door of the factory Elsa found Foy awaiting her, and they walked together through one of the gates of the city into the pleasant meadows that lay beyond.  At first they did not speak much, for each of them was occupied with thoughts which pressed their tongues to silence.  When they were clear of the town, however, Elsa could contain herself no more; indeed, the anguish awakened in her mind by the sight of Ramiro working upon nerves already overstrung had made her half-hysterical.  She began to speak; the words broke from her like water from a dam which it has breached.  She told Foy that she had seen the man, and more—­much more.  All the misery which she had suffered, all the love for the father who was lost to her.