The officer saluted and withdrew.
Florent Van Mander took the chair within the door, and turned his gaze critically upon the delegate of the States of Holland.
He saw a slight man with a hooked nose, a thin mouth, and a stooping figure, dressed richly but carelessly in prune-coloured velvet. He held his hands behind him, and regarded his visitor with large, intelligent brown eyes.
“You are from M. Fagel?”
“Yes, Mynheer.”
Florent felt weary and unreasonably depressed. The incongruity with his feelings of the neat farmhouse parlour, furnished with curtains and hangings of blue-and-white checked stuff, its bright pictures and highly polished furniture, its white glazed hearth and tiled floor, gave him unreasonable annoyance.
He had been greatly elated at the Secretary’s choice of him for a messenger; but he wished to see the Prince, not the representative of the States of Holland.
And the news of growing, almost hopeless, disaster that had met him on his way filled him, against himself, with disgust.
“Well,” asked Jerome Beverningh, “what has M. Fagel to say?”
The young man hesitated.