Baroness Orczy

“ I feel that that man down below is our evil genius. While he lives Chance will be against us, of that I am as convinced as I am of the justice of our cause. If that man lives, Jan, the Stadtholder will escape us; I feel it in my bones: something must have told me this in the night—it is a premonition that comes from above."
"Then the man must not live, my lord," said Jan coldly.
"You recognize that too, Jan, do you not?" rejoined Stoutenburg eagerly. ”

“ She will never know that for her dear sake, he has borne humiliation against which every nerve of his splendid nature did inwardly rebel, owning to guilt and shame lest her blue eyes shed tears for a brother's sin. She will never know that the warning to the Stadtholder came from him, and that he was neither a forger nor a thief, only just a soldier of fortune with a contempt for death, and an unspoken adoration for the one woman who seemed to him as distant from him as the stars. ”

“ General in command of the forces—foreign mercenaries and louts from the country—he has Jan for able captain. The mercenaries and the louts know nothing yet of what will happen to-morrow—when once the dawn has broken—but they are well prepared; like beasts of the desert they can scent blood in the air; look at them polishing up their swords and cleaning their cullivers! they know that to-morrow they will fight, even though to-night they have had no orders save to see that one prisoner tied with ropes to a beam and fainting with exposure and loss of blood does not contrive to escape. ”