The poor girl laughed hoarsely.  “Oh!  I hoped it,” she said.  “I am glad, I am glad, for now I shall die and go to join him.  But I wish that I had caught it before,” she rambled on to herself, “for then I would have taken it to him in prison and they couldn’t have treated him as they did.”  Suddenly she seemed to come to herself, for she added, “Go away, Vrouw van Goorl, go quickly or you may catch my sickness.”

“If so, I am afraid that the mischief is done, for I have kissed you,” answered Lysbeth.  “But I do not fear such things, though perhaps if I took it, this would save me many a trouble.  Still, there are others to think of, and I will go.”  So, having knelt down to pray awhile by the patient, and given the old nurse the basket of soup and food, Lysbeth went.

Next morning she heard that the Vrouw Jansen was dead, the pest that struck her being of the most fatal sort.

Lysbeth knew that she had run great risk, for there is no disease more infectious than the plague.  She determined, therefore, that so soon as she reached home she would burn her dress and other articles of clothing and purify herself with the fumes of herbs.  Then she dismissed the matter from her mind, which was already filled with another thought, a dominant, soul-possessing thought.

Oh God, Montalvo had returned to Leyden!  Out of the blackness of the past, out of the gloom of the galleys, had arisen this evil genius of her life; yes, and, by a strange fatality, of the life of Elsa Brant also, since it was her, she swore, who had dragged down her father.  Lysbeth was a brave woman, one who had passed through many dangers, but her whole heart turned sick with terror at the sight of this man, and sick it must remain till she, or he, were dead.  She could well guess what he had come to seek.  It was that cursed treasure of Hendrik Brant’s which had drawn him.  She knew from Elsa that for a year at least the man Ramiro had been plotting to steal this money at The Hague.  He had failed there, failed with overwhelming and shameful loss through the bravery and resource of her son Foy and their henchman, Red Martin.  Now he had discovered their identity; he was aware that they held the secret of the hiding-place of that accursed hoard, they and no others, and he had established himself in Leyden to wring it out of them.  It was clear, clear as the setting orb of the red sun before her.  She knew the man—­had she not lived with him?—­and there could be no doubt about it, and—­he was the new governor of the Gevangenhuis.  Doubtless he has purchased that post for his own dark purposes and—­to be near them.

Sick and half blind with the intensity of her dread, Lysbeth staggered home.  She must tell Dirk, that was her one thought; but no, she had been in contact with the plague, first she must purify herself.  So she went to her room, and although it was summer, lit a great fire on the hearth, and in it burned her garments.  Then she bathed and fumigated her hair and body over a brazier of strong herbs, such as in those days of frequent and virulent sickness housewives kept at hand, after which she dressed herself afresh and went to seek her husband.  She found him at a desk in his private room reading some paper, which at her approach he shuffled into a drawer.