Orent Muys answered in great agitation—
“Mynheer, His Highness has been proclaimed Stadtholder—he is now at the Peacock Inn receiving the homage of the crowd—and I have to take your signature back to him—otherwise—really, Mynheer, I could not answer for it—they are all worthy people, such as your own baker or butcher might be—but they are … excited——”
He paused as the fierce sounds of a tussle between the mob and the burgher guards rose from the street.
Maria de Witt sprang up and went to the window.
She was seen from below and greeted with a yell of fury and a shower of pebbles.
“Cornelius—” she came back breathlessly—“they will break in——”
“And if they do?”—the Ruard questioned Captain Hoogewerf.
“Then, I think,” was the answer, “that they will serve you as they served your portrait in the Stadhuis.”
Madam de Witt gave a little cry, and her husband’s eyes flashed.