ave for the sake of your good-will, I should now be
elsewhere."

Which was true enough. I should have been in the garden pleasaunce
beneath, and probably with my sword out, arguing the case with Von Reuss.

But she pressed my arm, for she understood that I had delayed a day from
my duty for her sake. So touched at heart was Ysolinde that she slipped
her hand down from my arm and took my hand instead, flirting a corner of
her shawl cleverly over both, to hide the fact from the men-at-arms--as
Helene could not have done to save her life. But every maid of honor who
passed noted and knew, lifting eyebrows at one another, I doubt not, as
soon as we passed, which thing made me feel like a fool and blush hotly.
For I knew that ere they were couched that night every maid of them would
tell Helene, and with pleasure in the telling too.

"Devil take--" I began and stopped.

"What did you say?" asked Ysolinde, almost tenderly.

"That if I come not back again from the Wolfmark it will be the better
for all of us!" I made answer, which was indeed the sense if not the
exact text of my remark.

"Nay," she said, shuddering, "not better for me that am companionless!"

"Why so?" said I, boldly. "You do not love me. Deep at the bottom of
your heart you love your husband, Karl the Prince. You know there is no
man like him. Me you do not love at all."

"You will not let me," she said, softly, almost like a shy country
maiden.

"Ah, if I had, you would have slain me long ere this," said I, "for I
read you like a child's horn-book that he plays battledore with. 'Have
not--_love_! Have--_hate_.' There you are, all in brief, my Lady
Ysolinde."

"It is false," laughed she; "but nevertheless I love greatly to hear you
call me Ysolinde."

She netted her fingers in mine beneath the shawl. Well might the High
Councillor say that she had a beautiful hand. Though, God wot, much he
knew about it. For Ysolinde of Plassenburg could speak with her hand,
love with it, be angry with it, hate with it--and kill with it.

"I am an experiment," said I; "one indeed that has lasted you a little
longer than the others, my Lady Ysolinde, only because you have not come
to the end of me so soon."

"Pshaw!" she said, pushing me from her, for we were at the turning of a
path, "you love another. That is the amulet against infection that you
carry. Yet sometimes I think that that other is only your hateful,
plain-favored, vainly conceited self!"

I saw