She certainly was bewildered and very puzzled now: joy at the thought that after all the Stadtholder was safe, joy that her brother's hand would not be stained with murder, or his honour with treachery, mingled with a vague sense of mistrust which she was powerless to combat, yet felt ashamed to admit.
"Then, my lord," she murmured at last, "do you really tell me that the outrage of which I have been the victim was merely planned by villains, for mercenary motives?"
"What else could have prompted it?" he asked blandly.
"Neither you ... nor ... nor any of your friends had a hand in it?" she insisted.
"I?" he exclaimed with a look of profound horror. "I?... to do you such a wrong! For what purpose, ye gods?"
"To ... to keep me out of the way...."
"I understand," he said simply. "And you, Gilda, believed this of me?"
"I believed it," she replied calmly.
"You did not realize then that I would give every drop of my blood to save you one instant's pain?"
"I did not realize," she said more coldly, "that you would give up your ambition for any woman or for anything."