"You are very faithful," he said, "and I know that you have no easy service."
In these words, in his voice and his face, she read the bitterness of his sorrow and humiliation in his wife. She noticed how tired he looked, how plain, even careless, was his dress. He was already much changed from the splendid cavalier who had mounted the stairs to greet his bride that St. Bartholomew's Day in Leipsic.
"It is my one pleasure to serve," she answered; "there is no other interest in my life."
He looked curiously at her warm beauty, on which her words seemed such a strange commentary.
"I may be called to Antwerp, where there is great trouble," he said; "in my absence speak to the Princess anent Breda—for there she must truly go, shortly."
He looked away out of the window as if he had already forgotten the waiting-woman, and Rénèe silently withdrew.
CHAPTER X
ANTWERP
Duprès the skryer did not stay long in Brussels; in a short time he had spent in lavish living the greater part of the spoils he had gathered from the Nassau mansion, and, his restless spirit tiring of the Brabant capital, he began wandering through the troubled land, attaching himself, where possible, to Brederode and his party of "the beggars," who were making a noisy progress over the country.
He was at the great meeting the members of the Confederacy held at St. Trond, and joined in the noisy demonstrations and riotous feasting that "the beggars" always indulged in and which made them but a poor reed for Liberty to lean on. He went with Brederode and Culemburg to Duffel, where they met Orange and Egmont, who came on behalf of the Regent to urge the Confederates to preserve the peace of the country instead of disturbing it, as they did by their riots and armed assemblies.
To which request Brederode replied very briefly that they were there to protect the poor people who wished to worship in the fields, and that until a satisfactory answer to the Petition was brought back by the two envoys, Berghen and Montigny, they would neither disarm nor disperse.