She turned sweet, expressionless eyes on the horseman, who laid the bloodstained relic reverently in her lap; she sat on a heap of stones beneath a tall poplar tree.
“She must not go to the Hague!” he cried. “Find her shelter here.”
“Mynheer John’s children?” gasped the coachman.
“His clerk took them to safety. It is like a fair at the Hague—the magistrates all dumb with dread … and on the Plaats——Oh! I am sick with what I saw.”
It had grown dusk; the villagers crept softly round the figure of Maria de Witt as she sat meekly clasping the hand to her breast.
“He is hurt, hurt!” she said in accents of agony,—“the rack, the pulley and the boot, but I have balsam in the carriage—Ladies, there will be an engagement at sea to-day, and my husband will save us all.”
They appealed to the pastor to take her in; but he was too cowardly to give her shelter, so they led her, unresisting, to the humble inn.
One servant stayed with her, the other embarked for Rotterdam to bring to her her sister-in-law, Maria Hoeuft.
She would not leave the parlour which she had first entered, nor take food, nor leave the fair right hand that she carried against her breast as tenderly as if it were her child.
The village surgeon would not visit her; the peasants stood aloof, fearful of befriending one so unfortunate.