“Has the princess told you what she wants you to do?” asked the duchess.

I answered that she had not, but that I was glad to pledge myself unenlightened.  I then placed a chair for the duchess, but, of course, remained standing.  Yolanda resumed her chair, and said:—­

“Fetch a chair, Sir Karl.  We are glad to have you sit, are we not, mother?”

“Indeed we are,” said Margaret.  “Please sit by the table, and the princess will explain why she brought you here.”

“I believe I can now do it myself, mother,” said Yolanda, taking a folded parchment from its pouch.

“See, my hand is perfectly steady.  Sir Karl has given me strength.”

She spread the parchment before her, and, taking a quill from the table, dipped it in the ink-well.

“I’ll not need you after all, Sir Karl.  I find I can commit my own crime,” she said, much to my disappointment.  I was, you see, eager to sin for her.  I longed to kill some one or to do some other deed of valiant and perilous villany.

Yolanda bent over the missive, quill in hand, but hesitated.  She changed her position on the chair, squaring herself before the parchment, and tried again, but she seemed unable to use the quill.  She placed it on the table and laughed nervously.

“I surely am a great fool,” she said.  “When I take the quill in my hand, I tremble like a squire on his quintain trial.  I’ll wait a moment, and grow calm again,” she added, with a fluttering little laugh peculiar to her when she was excited.  But she did not grow calm, and after she had vainly taken up the quill again and again, her mother said:—­

“Poor child!  Tell Sir Karl what you wish him to do.”

Yolanda did so, and then read the missive.  I did not know the English language perfectly, but Yolanda, who spoke it as if it were her mother tongue, translated as she read.  I had always considered the island language harsh till I heard Yolanda speak it.  Even the hissing “th” was music on her lips.  Had I been a young man I would doubtless have made a fool of myself for the sake of this beautiful child-woman.  When she had finished reading the missive, she left her chair and came to my side.  She bent over my shoulder, holding the parchment before me.

“What I want to do, but can’t—­what I want you to do is so small and simple a matter that it is almost amusing.  I grow angry when I think that I cannot do so little a thing to help myself; but you see, Sir Karl, I tremble and my hand shakes to that extent I fear to mar the page.  I simply want to make the letter ‘t’ on this parchment and I can’t.  Will you do it for me?”

“Ay, gladly,” I responded, “but where and why?” Then she pointed out to me the word “nov” in the manuscript and said:—­

“A letter ‘t,’ if deftly done, will make ‘not’ instead of ‘nov.’  Do you understand, Sir Karl?”