Again there was nothing to be done, so Lysbeth must needs thrust out her foot from which very delicately and carefully he unstrapped the skate.
“What Jack can bear Jill must put up with,” muttered Lysbeth to herself as she advanced the other foot. Just at that moment, however, the door behind them began to open.
“She who buys,” murmured Montalvo as he commenced on the second set of straps. Then the door swung wide, and the voice of Dirk van Goorl was heard saying in a tone of relief:
“Yes, sure enough it is she, Tante Clara, and some one is taking off her boots.”
“Skates, Señor, skates,” interrupted Montalvo, glancing backward over his shoulder, then added in a whisper as he bent once more to his task, “ahem—pays. You will introduce me, is it not so? I think it will be less awkward for you.”
So, as flight was impossible, for he held her by the foot, and an instinct told her that, especially to the man she loved, the only thing to do was to make light of the affair, Lysbeth said—
“Dirk, Cousin Dirk, I think you know—this is—the Honourable Captain the Count Juan de Montalvo.”
“Ah! it is the Señor van Goorl,” said Montalvo, pulling off the skate and rising from his knee, which, from his excess of courtesy, was now wet through. “Señor, allow me to return to you, safe and sound, the fair lady of whom I have robbed you for a while.”
“For a while, captain,” blurted Dirk; “why, from first to last, she has been gone nearly four hours, and a fine state we have been in about her.”
“That will all be explained presently, Señor—at supper, to which the Jufvrouw has been so courteous as to ask me,” then, aside and below his breath, again the ominous word of reminder—“pays.” “Most happily, your cousin’s presence was the means of saving a fellow-creature’s life. But, as I have said, the tale is long. Señor—permit,” and in another second Lysbeth found herself walking down her own hall upon the arm of the Spaniard, while Dirk, her aunt, and some guests followed obediently behind.