Chapter 20

When Madam Garvloit had made some excuse next morning to leave the two
alone together in her sitting-room, Salvé took out of his pocket a small
parcel, and opening it deliberately, said, with a certain solemnity--

"Five years ago, Elizabeth, when I was in Boston, I bought these rings."
He took them out of the paper, and laid them in her hand. "I have had a
good deal to bear since, but you see I have kept them all along
notwithstanding."

She threw her arms round his neck, hid her face upon his breast, and he
could feel that she was crying. She tried them on then, both on the same
finger, and holding up the hand to show him, said--

"That is the first ring I ever possessed."

A shadow passed across his face, and it flushed slightly; and she only
then perceived what connection of ideas her remark might have suggested.

He had three days to spare before he was obliged to be back at
Pürmurende on board the old brig of which he was now master, and with
which, patched and leaky though she was, after his sailor's pride had
been overcome, he had grown to be well satisfied enough--more
particularly, perhaps, because she was his own. The happiness of these
days was not marred by a single further incident to remind him of the
past; and it was only on the day that he was to leave that the foul
fiend Distrust was again awakened in his unlucky heart.

It was a Sunday, and after the morning service there was to be a sort of
popular _fête_ in Amsterdam. At the famous town-hall, where, in
Holland's great days, when De Ruyter's and Van Tromp's guns were
thundering in the sea outside, the great merchant princes used to sit
round the republican council-board, was to be exhibited that day, for
the first time, the new picture of the young Dutch hero, Van Spyck, who
blew up his ship in the war of 1830 against Belgium.

Salvé and Elizabeth joined the stream, and even caught some of the
national enthusiasm prevailing in the crowd that was swaying backwards
and forwards in the courtyard, where a band was playing the stirring
national air, "Wien Neerlands bloed door de aders vloeit."

At last they found themselves before the canvas. It represented the
young cadet of seventeen years on the gunboat at the supreme moment.

Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed,
while Salvé kept her from being pressed upon behind.

"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes
off the picture,--"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender. He
has no choice--they are too many for him. But don't you see the thought
he has in his mind?--you can read it in his face. And what a