"You do not fear any public tumult, surely?" Rupert said.
"I do not anticipate it, and yet I regard it as possible," Van Duyk said. "The people in our town have been given to bursts of frenzy, in which some of our best men have been slain."
"Why don't you go down to the Hague again till this madness has passed by?"
"I cannot do that. My enemies would take advantage of it, and might sack my house and warehouses."
"But there is the burgher guard; and all the respectable citizens are with you."
"That is true enough," the merchant said; "but they are always slow to take action, and I might be killed, and my place burnt before they came on to the ground. I will send Maria with you down to the Hague to her aunt's. If this be the work of the man we wot of, it may be that he will then cease his efforts, and the bad feeling he has raised will die away; but in truth, I shall never feel that Maria is safe until I hear that his evil course has come to an end."
"If I come across him, I will bring it to an end, and that quickly," Rupert said, wrathfully. "At any rate, I think that the burgomaster ought to take steps to protect the house."
"The council laugh at the idea of danger," Van Duyk said. "To them the idea that I should be charged with dealing with the enemy is so supremely ridiculous that they make light of it, and are inclined to think that the state of things I describe is purely a matter of my own imagination. If I were attacked they would come as quickly as they could to my aid; but they may be all too late.
"There is one thing, Rupert. This enemy hates you, and desires your death as much as he wishes to carry off my daughter, and through her to become possessed of my money bags. If, then, this work is his doing, assuredly he will bring it to a head while you are here, so as to gratify both his hate and his greed at once."
"It is a pity that you cannot make some public statement, that unless your daughter marries a man of whom you approve you will give her no fortune whatever."