Three days later Montalvo made an announcement to Lysbeth. For a wonder he was supping at home alone with his wife, whose presence he had commanded. She obeyed and attended, sitting at the further end of the table, whence she rose from time to time to wait upon him with her own hands. Watching him the while with her quiet eyes, she noticed that he was ill at ease.
“Cannot you speak?” he asked at last and savagely. “Do you think it is pleasant for a man to sit opposite a woman who looks like a corpse in her coffin till he wishes she were one?”
“So do I,” answered Lysbeth, and again there was silence.
Presently she broke it. “What do you want?” she asked. “More money?”
“Of course I want money,” he answered furiously.
“Then there is none; everything has gone, and the notary tells me that no one will advance another stiver on the house. All my jewellery is sold also.”
He glanced at her hand. “You have still that ring,” he said.
She looked at it. It was a hoop of gold set with emeralds of considerable value which her husband had given her before marriage and always insisted upon her wearing. In fact, it had been bought with the money which he borrowed from Dirk van Goorl.
“Take it,” she said, smiling for the first time, and drawing off the ring she passed it over to him. He turned his head aside as he stretched his hand towards the trinket lest his face should betray the shame which even he must feel.
“If your child should be a son,” he muttered, “tell him that his father had nothing but a piece of advice to leave him; that he should never touch a dice-box.”
“For a week or two I must. I have been warned that a difficulty has arisen, about which I need not trouble you. Doubtless you will hear of it soon enough, and though it is not true, I must leave Leyden until the thing blows over. In fact I am going now.”
“You are about to desert me,” she answered; “having got all my money, I say that you are going to desert me who am—thus! I see it in your face.”
Montalvo turned away and pretended not to hear.
“Well, thank God for it,” Lysbeth added, “only I wish that you could take your memory and everything else of yours with you.”
As these bitter words passed her lips the door opened, and there entered one of his own subalterns, followed by four soldiers and a man in a lawyer’s robe.