Quietly and dispassionately Gilda drew her skirts away from him.
"An you have recovered your temper, my lord," she said coldly, "I pray you ask the prisoner those questions which you desired to put to him. I am satisfied that he is your enemy, and if he were not bound, pinioned and wounded he would probably not have need of a woman's hand to protect him."
Stoutenburg rose to his feet. He was angered with himself for allowing his hatred and his rage to get the better of his prudence, and tried to atone for his exhibition of incontinent rage by a great show of dignity and of reserve.
"I must ask you again, fellow—and for the last time," he said slowly turning once more to Diogenes, "if you have realized how infamous have been your insinuations against mine honour, and that of others whom the jongejuffrouw holds in high regard? Your calumnies have caused her infinite sorrow more bitter for her to bear than the dastardly crime which you did commit against her person. Have you realized this, and are you prepared to make amends for your crime and to mitigate somewhat the grave punishment which you have deserved by speaking the plain truth before the jongejuffrouw now?"
"And what plain truth doth the jongejuffrouw desire to hear?" asked Diogenes with equal calm.
Stoutenburg would have replied, but Gilda broke in quietly:
"Your crime against me, sir, I would readily forgive, had I but the assurance that no one in whom I trusted, no one whom I loved had a hand in instigating it."
The ghost of his merry smile—never very distant—spread over the philosopher's pale face.
"Will you deign to allow me, mejuffrouw," he said, "at any rate to tell you one certain, unvarnished truth, which mayhap you will not even care to believe, and that is that I would give my life—the few chances, that is, that I still have of it—to obliterate from your mind the memory of the past few days."
"That you cannot do, sir," she rejoined, "but you would greatly ease the load of sorrow which you have helped to lay upon me, if you gave me the assurance which I ask."