ow the
bellies of their richly harnessed palfreys. And along the flanks of this
cavalcade ran grooms and huntsmen in green and leather, their jagged
liripipes flung about their necks, leading the leashed hounds.

The burghers craned their necks, and Levantine merchant argued with
Lombard trader upon an estimate of the wealth paraded thus before them.
And then at last came the young Duke himself, in black, as if to detach
himself from the surrounding splendour. He was of middle stature, of
a strong and supple build, with a lean, swarthy face and lively eyes.
Beside him, on a white horse, rode a dazzling youth dressed from head
to foot in flame-coloured silk, a peaked bonnet of black velvet set upon
his lovely golden head, a hooded falcon perched upon his left wrist,
a tiny lute slung behind him by a black ribbon. He laughed as he rode,
looking the very incarnation of youth and gaiety.

The cavalcade passed slowly towards the Prinssenhof, the ducal
residence. It had all but crossed the square when suddenly a voice--a
woman's voice, high and tense--rang out.

"Justice, my Lord Duke of Burgundy! Justice, Lord Duke, for a woman's
wrongs!"

It startled the courtly riders, and for a moment chilled their gaiety.
The scarlet youth at the Duke's side swung round in his saddle to obtain
a view of her who called so piteously, and he beheld Sapphira Danvelt.

She was all in black, and black was the veil that hung from her steeple
head-dress, throwing into greater relief her pallid loveliness which the
youth's glance was quick to appraise. He saw, too, from her air and from
the grooms attending her, that she was a woman of some quality, and the
tragic appeal of her smote home in his gay, poetic soul. He put forth a
hand and clutched the Duke's arm, and, as if yielding to this, the Duke
reined up.

"What is it that you seek?" Charles asked her not unkindly, his lively
dark eyes playing over her.

"Justice!" was all she answered him very piteously, and yet with a
certain fierceness of insistence.

"None asks it of me in vain, I hope," he answered gravely. "But I do not
dispense it from the saddle in the public street. Follow us."

And he rode on.

She followed to the Prinssenhof with her grooms and her woman Catherine.
There she was made to wait in a great hall, thronged with grooms and
men-at-arms and huntsmen, who were draining the measure sent them by the
Duke. She stood apart, wrapped in her tragic sorrow, and none mole