By this time the great oaf had come back to the door of the house, and now stood alternately rubbing his elbow and rear, with an expression ludicrously penitent, at once puzzled and kindly.

“Ah, come in with you, will you?” said the man.  “Certes, were it not for Mistress Ysolinde, I would set on the little imps of the street to nip you to pieces and eat you raw.”

The angry serving-man held the door as wide as possible and stood aside, whereat the Lubber Fiend tucked his head so far down that it seemed to disappear into the cavity of his chest, and scurried along the passage bent almost double.  As he passed the door he drew all the latter part of his body together, exactly like a dog that fears a kick in the by-going.  The respectable man-servant stirred not a muscle, but the gesture told a tale of the discipline of the house by the White Gate at times when visitors were not being admitted by the main door, and when Mistress Ysolinde, favorer of the Fool Lubber Fiend, was not so closely at hand.

It was a grand house, too, the finest I had ever seen, with hangings of arras everywhere, many and parti-colored—­red hunters who hunted, green foresters who shot, puff-cheeked boys blowing on hunting-horns; a house with mysterious vistas, glimpses into dim-lit rooms, wafts of perfume, lamps that were not extinguished even in the daytime, burning far within.  All in mighty striking contrast to the bare stark strength of our Red Tower on the Wolfsberg with its walls fourteen feet thick.

As I followed the serving-man through the halls and stairways my feet fell without noise on carpets never woven in our bare-floored Germany, nor yet in England, where they still strew rushes, even (so they say) in the very dining-rooms of the great—­surely a most barbarous and unwholesome country.  Nevertheless, carpets of wondrous hue were here in the house of Master Gerard, scarlet and blue, and so thick of ply that the foot sank into them as if reluctant ever to rise again.

As I came to the landing place at the head of the stairway, one passed hastily before me and above me, with a sough and a rustle like the wind among tall poplar trees on the canal edges.

I looked up, and lo! a girl, not beautiful, but, as it were, rather strange and fascinating.  She was lithe like a serpent and undulated in her walk.  Her dress was sea-green silk of a rare loom, and clung closely about her.  It had scales upon it of dull gold, which gave back a lustrous under-gleam of coppery red as she moved.  She had a pale, eager face, lined with precision enough, but filled more with passion than womanly charm.  Her eyes were emerald and beautiful, as the sea is when you look down upon it from a height and the white sand shines up through the clear depths.

Such was Ysolinde, daughter of Gerard von Sturm, favorer of Lubber Fiends and creator of this strange paradise through which she glided like a spangled Orient serpent.