So, after first tampering with the seal, and finding there was not a syllable about the deed, he took it to her with his own hand; and made a merit of it to himself: a set-off; and on a scale not uncommon where the self-accuser is the judge.
The birth of Margaret's child surprised and shocked him, and put his treacherous act in a new light. Should his letter take effect he should cause the dishonour of her who was the daughter of one friend, the granddaughter of another, and whose land he was keeping from her too.
These thoughts preying on him at that period of life when the strength of body decays, and the memory of old friends revives, filled him with gloomy horrors. Yet he was afraid to confess. For the cure was an honest man, and would have made him disgorge. And with him Avarice was an ingrained habit, Penitence only a sentiment.
Matters were thus when, one day, returning from the town hall to his own house, he found a woman waiting for him in the vestibule, with a child in her arms. She was veiled, and so, concluding she had something to be ashamed of, he addressed her magisterially, On this she let down her veil and looked him full in the face.
It was Margaret Brandt.
Her sudden appearance and manner startled him, and he could not conceal his confusion.
“Where is my Gerard?” cried she, her bosom heaving. “Is he alive?”
“For aught I know,” stammered Ghysbrecht. “I hope so, for your sake. Prithee come into this room. The servants!”
“Not a step,” said Margaret, and she took him by the shoulder, and held him with all the energy of an excited woman. “You know the secret of that which is breaking my heart. Why does not my Gerard come, nor send a line this many months? Answer me, or all the town is like to hear me, let alone thy servants, My misery is too great to be sported with.”
In vain he persisted he knew nothing about Gerard. She told him those who had sent her to him told her another tale.