Margaret and Reicht went out, with Dragon walking majestically behind them. They came back long after midnight, and retired to rest.
Catherine never knew.
Margaret read her friends: she saw the sturdy, faithful Frisian could hold her tongue, and Catherine could not. Yet I am not sure she would have trusted even Reicht had her nerve equalled her spirit; but with all her daring and resolution, she was a tender, timid woman, a little afraid of the dark, very afraid of being alone in it, and desperately afraid of wolves. Now Dragon could kill a wolf in a brace of shakes; but then Dragon would not go with her, but only with Reicht; so altogether she made one confidante.
The next night they made another moonlight reconnaissance, and as I think, with some result. For not the next night (it rained that night and extinguished their courage), but the next after they took with them a companion, the last in the world Reicht Heynes would have thought of; yet she gave her warm approval as soon as she was told he was to go with them.
Imagine how these stealthy assailants trembled and panted when the moment of action came; imagine, if you can, the tumult in Margaret's breast, the thrilling hopes, chasing, and chased by sickening fears; the strange and perhaps unparalleled mixture of tender familiarity and distant awe with which a lovely and high-spirited, but tender, adoring woman, wife in the eye of the Law, and no wife in the eye of the Church, trembling, blushing, paling, glowing, shivering, stole at night, noiseless as the dew, upon the hermit of Gouda.
And the stars above seemed never so bright and calm.
CHAPTER XCII
Yes, the hermit of Gouda was the vicar of Gouda, and knew it not, so absolute was his seclusion.
My reader is aware that the moment the frenzy of his passion passed, he was seized with remorse for having been betrayed into it. But perhaps only those who have risen as high in religious spirit as he had, and suddenly fallen, can realize the terror at himself that took possession of him. He felt like one whom self-confidence had betrayed to the very edge of a precipice.