They lifted her on to the settle and put out the light.
There was much to do in the little inn, and she was the widow of Cornelius de Witt, so they left her alone.…
When she recovered she sat up in the dark, then rose to her feet unsteadily.
Enough torchlight glimmered through the window for her to see the door; she pulled it open and stood listening.
In the opposite room, across the narrow corridor, men were talking together; their door stood ajar, and a thick bar of yellow fell across the darkness.
“If he had had the first message it had been prevented, Bentinck.”
“I never saw him so moved as when he heard the news.”
“This delay frets him—he cursed the groom for that loose shoe——”
“Yet now it is too late.”