Still she hesitated, dismay written on her face.

“Jufvrouw Lysbeth,” he said in an altered voice, “in my country we have a homely proverb which says, ‘she who buys, pays.’  You have bought and—­the goods have been delivered.  Do you understand?  Ah! allow me to have the pleasure of arranging those furs.  I knew that you were the soul of honour, and were but—­shall we say teasing me?  Otherwise, had you really wished to go, of course you would have skated away just now while you had the opportunity.  That is why I gave it you, as naturally I should not desire to detain you against your will.”

Lysbeth heard and was aghast, for this man’s cleverness overwhelmed her.  At every step he contrived to put her in the wrong; moreover she was crushed by the sense that he had justice on his side.  She had bought and she must pay.  Why had she bought?  Not for any advantage of her own, but from an impulse of human pity—­to save a fellow creature’s life.  And why should she have perjured herself so deeply in order to save that life?  She was a Catholic and had no sympathy with such people.  Probably this person was an Anabaptist, one of that dreadful sect which practised nameless immoralities, and ran stripped through the streets crying that they were “the naked Truth.”  Was it then because the creature had declared that she had known her father in her childhood?  To some extent yes, but was not there more behind?  Had she not been influenced by the woman’s invocation about the Spaniards, of which the true meaning came home to her during that dreadful sledge race; at the moment, indeed, when she saw the Satanic look upon the face of Montalvo?  It seemed to her that this was so, though at the time she had not understood it; it seemed to her that she was not a free agent; that some force pushed her forward which she could neither control nor understand.

Moreover—­and this was the worst of it—­she felt that little good could come of her sacrifice, or that if good came, at least it would not be to her or hers.  Now she was as a fish in a net, though why it was worth this brilliant Spaniard’s while to snare her she could not understand, for she forgot that she was beautiful and a woman of property.  Well, to save the blood of another she had bought, and in her own blood and happiness, or in that of those dear to her, assuredly she must pay, however cruel and unjust might be the price.

Such were the thoughts that passed through Lysbeth’s mind as the strong Flemish gelding lumbered forward, dragging the sledge at the same steady pace over rough ice and smooth.  And all the while Montalvo behind her was chatting pleasantly about this matter and that; telling her of the orange groves in Spain, of the Court of the Emperor Charles, of adventures in the French wars, and many other things, to which conversation she made such answer as courtesy demanded and no more.  What would Dirk think, she was wondering, and her cousin, Pieter van de Werff, whose good opinion she valued, and all the gossips of Leyden?  She only prayed that they might not have missed her, or at least that they took it for granted that she had gone home.