Merodé was angry, and his heart was full of bitterness and jealousy; but he concealed it admirably.
"Now that your friends are in this neighbourhood, I shall have work cut out for me; they must be received with such hospitality and honour as the arsenals of the Emperor enable us to afford to such visitors. Farewell just now, Gabrielle. I give you three days to think of it. (Three days! now, have I not the patience of Job?) If in that time you do not learn to love me, I shall hate you!" and he retired singing the fag end of an old song,
"Three days, fair maid, my love will last,
And in three days my love is past."
New hope sprang up in the bosom of Gabrielle.
Ian—and what a tide of suffocating thoughts his cherished image brought upon her mind—could not be alone, if in the vicinity of Helnœsland. He had heard of her detention there, and had come to free—perhaps to love, her.
What happiness might yet be in store for her!
Since she had been Merodé's prisoner, she had calculated the time, and found it many, many weeks, these made hundreds of hours, each of which had been counted, and watched wearily too.
She ceased to count them from that period, and began to reckon anew from the time when she had seen Ian.
He escaped the Merodeurs, and the fate their leader intended him to suffer; but many a long hour passed slowly on, and Gabrielle found herself still a prisoner in the old tower of Helnœsland.