"Thank you indeed, Madame!"
"You were looking at the portrait? It is my dear husband. Is it not a fine head? Can you imagine, after seeing it, that I could put that odious captain in his place? Not that I should think every man bad unless he resembled my husband. No, that would be unjust. But come and see my garden, Monsieur Rochestair. It is beautiful outside now that the sun is going down."
"I shall be delighted. I have noticed how the scent of the flowers comes to us here through the windows."
"Yes, I love flowers. Mynheer Grootz knows that."
Madame conducted Harry through the grounds. They were laid out with more freedom than was usual in Holland, and reminded him at many a turn of well-tended parks at home. The house was surrounded by its garden; beyond this was an expanse of lawn and thin park bounded by a wall. Beyond this again, Madame de Vaudrey explained, lay the orchard belonging to the far larger estate now owned by Monsieur de Polignac. At a considerable distance from the house on the eastern side Harry remarked a large open stretch of ground, roughly circular in shape, covered with grass that grew wild and was left uncropt, Across the middle of it ran a ditch, now apparently dry, passing under the garden wall and the road, and evidently connected with the canal. Near to the spot where the ditch disappeared beneath the wall stood a large dilapidated building, like the storehouse usually attached to a Dutch mill.
"You wonder at our neglect of this part of the grounds," said the lady with a smile. "But that is our skating pond. In winter we open the sluices at the canal end of the ditch; it fills, the water overflows, and thus we flood the field. Then comes the frost, and we have, I think, the finest skating pond in Holland, and quite safe. We used to hold tournaments, people came from miles around; but alas! since this terrible war has recommenced we have almost forgotten those pleasant sports of winter. I do hope it will soon come to an end. I never could understand what men are fighting about. My dear husband used to speak of the balance of power; the French king wishes to rule everybody, he told me; certainly King Louis is a bad man; he has behaved disgracefully to us poor Huguenots; and I dare say you English are quite right in helping the Dutch to punish him. But war is so terrible. My dear husband was trying to invent something that would enable one army to make another army senseless without killing them; I know nothing about it, but the idea was excellent; and if the truth were known I dare say it was that odious Captain Aglionby who spoilt that too."
Thus the good lady kept chattering to Harry as she conducted him over her little estate. The evening was drawing rapidly in; a light mist was rising, and Madame shivered a little as she turned back towards the house. A moment afterwards her daughter met her.
"Mother," she said, "you should not be out in the damp air. You know it is bad for you."
"Yes, my dear," replied Madame de Vaudrey, submitting to be enwrapped in a large woollen shawl which her daughter's fair hands wound about her head and shoulders. "I have been showing Monsieur Rochestair our little property—alas! soon to be ours no more. I told Monsieur why, Adèle."
The girl's cheeks flushed, but she said nothing.