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 the Prince sit alone, according to his custom, in an arbor behind us at that very moment—­and judge if I blushed or no.  But the Princess saw him not, being eager upon her flouting of me.

“I tell you,” she cried, scornfully and disdainfully, “there is nothing interesting about you but the blueness of your eyes, and that any monk can make upon parchment, aye, and deeper and bluer, with his lapis-lazuli.  An experiment!—­Why should I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, experiment with you, the son of the Red Axe of the Wolfsberg ?”

“Nay, that I know not,” I answered; “but yet I am indeed no more than your arrow-butts, your target of practice, your whipping-boy, to be slung at and arrow-drilled and bullet-pitted at your pleasure!”