“You have been acting on your principles instead of your instincts,” he said. “In your heart you never trusted him.”
“I have ever done him justice,” answered John de Witt, “and treated him in such a manner that this act of his, this contemptuous blow in the face of my authority, is base ingratitude.”
“You never loved him,” insisted M. de Montbas in the same kind of trembling, nervous anger. “Though ye have had the tutoring of him, ye never loved him.”
The Grand Pensionary looked straightly into the soldier’s face.
“Nay, I never loved him,” he said. “It was not possible.”
“But you trusted him.”
“It is my habit,” returned M. de Witt proudly, “to trust those with whom I deal.”
M. de Montbas shrugged his shoulders impatiently. To Florent’s covertly observant eyes he seemed in an agitation bordering on fear.
“To join Prince John Maurice at Breda!” ejaculated the Grand Pensionary. “It is a scheme concocted with the Princess Dowager—the Prince was recently at Cleves. Who, besides, would he have with him?—Heenvliet, Renswoude, and Boreel, I thought that I could have trusted them; but Bromley and Van Odyk, I had intention of replacing … they are at the bottom of this——”
“The Prince, and no one but the Prince, is at the bottom of this!” cried M. de Montbas.