“Why do you come here?” she asked; “I have given you my answer.”

“I come for your own sake,” he replied, “to give you my reasons for conduct which you may think strange.  You remember a certain conversation?”

“Perfectly,” broke in Lysbeth.

“A slight mistake, I think, Jufvrouw, I mean a conversation about an excellent friend of yours, whose spiritual affairs seem to interest you.”

“What of it, Senor?”

“Only this; I have made inquiries and——­”

Lysbeth looked up unable to conceal her anxiety.

“Oh!  Jufvrouw, let me beg of you to learn to control your expression; the open face of childhood is so dangerous in these days.”

“He is my cousin.”

“I know; were he anything more, I should be so grieved, but we can most of us spare a cousin or two.”

“If you would cease amusing yourself, Senor——­”

“And come to the point?  Of course I will.  Well, the result of my inquiries has been to find out that this worthy person is a heretic of the most pernicious sort.  I said inquiries, but there was no need for me to make any.  He has been——­”

“Not denounced,” broke in Lysbeth.

“Oh! my dear lady, again that tell-tale emotion from which all sorts of things might be concluded.  Yes—­denounced—­but fortunately to myself as a person appointed under the Edict.  It will, I fear, be my duty to have him arrested this evening—­you wish to sit down, allow me to hand you a chair—­but I shall not deal with the case myself.  Indeed, I propose to pass him over to the worthy Ruard Tapper, the Papal Inquisitor, you know—­every one has heard of the unpleasant Tapper—­who is to visit Leyden next week, and who, no doubt, will make short work of him.”

“What has he done?” asked Lysbeth in a low voice, and bending down her head to hide the working of her features.

“Done?  My dear lady, it is almost too dreadful to tell you.  This misguided and unfortunate young man, with another person whom the witnesses have not been able to identify, was seen at midnight reading the Bible.”

“The Bible!  Why should that be wrong?”

“Hush!  Are you also a heretic?  Do you not know that all this heresy springs from the reading of the Bible?  You see, the Bible is a very strange book.  It seems that there are many things in it which, when read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that.  When read by a consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different.  In the same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in the Bible that to the consecrated eye are plain as the sun and the moon.  The difference between heresy and orthodoxy is, in short, the difference between what can actually be found in the letter of this remarkable work, and what is really there—­according to their holinesses.”

“Almost thou persuadest me——­” began Lysbeth bitterly.

“Hush! lady—­to be, what you are, an angel.”