So the pair, who looked handsome enough before the altar, were wed, and went to taste of such nuptial bliss as was reserved for them in Lysbeth’s comfortable house in the Bree Straat.  Here they lived almost alone, for Lysbeth’s countrymen and women showed their disapproval of her conduct by avoiding her company, and, for reasons of his own, Montalvo did not encourage the visiting of Spaniards at his house.  Moreover, the servants were changed, while Tante Clara and the girl Greta had also disappeared.  Indeed, Lysbeth, finding out the false part which they had played towards her, dismissed them both before her marriage.

It will be guessed that after the events that led to their union Lysbeth took little pleasure in her husband’s society.  She was not one of those women who can acquiesce in marriage by fraud or capture, and even learn to love the hand which snared them.  So it came about that to Montalvo she spoke very seldom; indeed after the first week of marriage she only saw him on rare occasions.  Very soon he found out that his presence was hateful to her, and turned her detestation to account with his usual cleverness.  In other words, Lysbeth bought freedom by parting with her property—­in fact, a regular tariff was established, so many guilders for a week’s liberty, so many for a month’s.

This was an arrangement that suited Montalvo well enough, for in his heart he was terrified of this woman, whose beautiful face had frozen into a perpetual mask of watchful hatred.  He could not forget that frightful curse which had taken deep root in his superstitious mind, and already seemed to flourish there, for it was true that since she spoke it he had never known a quiet hour.  How could he when he was haunted night and day by the fear lest his wife should murder him?

Surely, if ever Death looked out of a woman’s eyes it looked out of hers, and it seemed to him that such a deed might trouble her conscience little; that she might consider it in the light of an execution, and not as a murder.  Bah! he could not bear to think of it.  What would it be to drink his wine one day and then feel a hand of fire gripping at his vitals because poison had been set within the cup; or, worse still, if anything could be worse, to wake at night and find a stiletto point grating against his backbone?  Little wonder that Montalvo slept alone and was always careful to lock his door.

He need not have taken such precautions; whatever her eyes might say, Lysbeth had no intention of killing this man.  In that prayer of hers she had, as it were, placed the matter in the hand of a higher Power, and there she meant to leave it, feeling quite convinced that although vengeance might tarry it would fall at last.  As for her money, he could have it.  From the beginning her instinct told her that her husband’s object was not amorous, but purely monetary, a fact of which she soon had plentiful proof, and her great, indeed her only hope was that when the wealth was gone he would go too.  An otter, says the Dutch proverb, does not nest in a dry dyke.