The lady drew closer.
“I know that hand very well,” she said. “Yesterday it was on the body of my husband.”
A shriek ran round the group. The wretched stranger, finding himself face to face with the wife of Cornelius, fell on his knees in the road and could not speak.
Maria de Witt was quite collected. In that instant when she heard, through the coach window, that she was too late—when she heard what had happened at the Hague—heart and brain had broken.
“I have been very patient,” she said, “for it was God’s will—but I must hasten now, for I wish to accompany him into exile.—I heard at Dordt this morning, Mynheer, that he was exiled.”
She turned towards the coach.
“Why do you not drive on?” she asked, and fell against the dusty wheel.
There was no one with her save the two men-servants; they dismounted and led her to the roadside, themselves incapable with grief.
“Where is his hand?” she asked. “My lord gave me his hand——”