“Oh! Heer Adrian,” she answered, laughing, “I am afraid that fault can be found with most of us North Holland folk, and myself among the number. You see it is given to very few of us to be tall and noble-looking like high-born Spaniards—not that I should wish to resemble any Spaniard, however lovely she might be,” Elsa added, with a slight hardening of her voice and face. “But,” she went on hurriedly, as though sorry that the remark had escaped her, “you, sir, and Foy are strangely unlike to be brothers; is it not so?”
“We are half-brothers,” said Adrian looking straight before him; “we have the same mother only; but please do not call me ‘sir,’ call me ‘cousin.’”
“No, I cannot do that,” she replied gaily, “for Foy’s mother is no relation of mine. I think that I must call you ‘Sir Prince,’ for, you see, you appeared at exactly the right time; just like the Prince in the fairy-tales, you know.”
Here was an opening not to be neglected by a young man of Adrian’s stamp.
“Ah!” he said in a tender voice, and looking up at the lady with his dark eyes, “that is a happy name indeed. I would ask no better lot than to be your Prince, now and always charged to defend you from every danger.” (Here, it may be explained, that, however exaggerated his language, Adrian honestly meant what he said, seeing that already he was convinced that to be the husband of the beautiful heiress of one of the wealthiest men in the Netherlands would be a very satisfactory walk in life for a young man in his position.)
“Oh! Sir Prince,” broke in Elsa hurriedly, for her cavalier’s ardour was somewhat embarrassing, “you are telling the story wrong; the tale I mean did not go on like that at all. Don’t you remember? The hero rescued the lady and handed her over—to—to—her father.”
“Of whom I think he came to claim her afterwards,” replied Adrian with another languishing glance, and a smile of conscious vanity at the neatness of his answer. Their glances met, and suddenly Adrian became aware that Elsa’s face had undergone a complete change. The piquante, half-amused smile had passed out of it; it was strained and hard and the eyes were frightened.
“Oh! now I understand the shadow—how strange,” she exclaimed in a new voice.
“What is the matter? What is strange?” he asked.
“Oh!—only that your face reminded me so much of a man of whom I am terrified. No, no, I am foolish, it is nothing, those footpads have upset me. Praise be to God that we are out of that dreadful wood! Look, neighbour Broekhoven, here is Leyden before us. Are not those red roofs pretty in the twilight, and how big the churches seem. See, too, there is water all round the walls; it must be a very strong town. I should think that even the Spaniards could not take it, and oh! I am sure that it would be a good thing if we might find a city which we were quite, quite certain the Spaniards could never take—all, all of us,” and she sighed heavily.