“It is like my father,” she said, after a little; “but since I also go thither, you shall be of my escort.  A sufficient guard accompanies me all the way to the city, and I dare say the arrangement may serve your convenience as well as add to the pleasure and safety of my journeying.”

“But how will your father do without your company, Lady Ysolinde?” I asked.  For it seemed strange that father and daughter should thus part without reason in these disturbed times.

She laughed more heartily than I had heard her.

“My father has been used to missing me for months at a time, and, moreover, is well resigned also.  But you do not say that you are rejoiced to be of a lady’s escort in so long a travel.”

“Indeed, I am much honored and glad to have so great a favor done to me.  I am but a mannerless, landward youth, to have been bred in the outer courts of a palace.  But that which I do not know you will teach me, and my faults I shall be eager to amend.”

“Pshaw!—­psutt!” said Ysolinde, making a little face, “be not so mock-modest.  You do very well.  But tell me if you have any sweetheart in the city to leave behind you.”

Now this bold question at once reddened my face and heightened my confusion.

“Nay, lady,” I stammered, conscious that I was blushing furiously, “I am over-young to have thought much of the things of love.  I know no woman in the city save our old house-keeper Hanne, and the Little Playmate.”

The Lady Ysolinde looked up quickly.

“Ah, the Little Playmate!” she said, in a low voice, curiously distinct from that which she used when she had interpreted her visions to me.  “The Little Playmate!  That sounds as though it might be interesting.  Who is the Little Playmate?”

“She is a maid whose folks were slain long ago by the Duke in a foray, and the little one being left, my father begged her life.  And she has been brought up with me in the Red Tower.”

“How old is she now?” The Lady Ysolinde’s next question leaped out like the flash of a dagger from its sheath.

“That,” answered I, meditatively, “I know not exactly, because none could tell how old she was when she came to us.”

“Tut,” she said, impatiently tossing her head, “do not twist your answers to me—­only wise men and courtiers have the skill to do that and hide it.  As yet you are neither.  Is she ten, or is she twenty, or is she mid-way betwixt the two?”

“I think she may be a matter of seventeen years of age.”

“Is she pretty?” was the next question.

“No,” said I, not knowing well what to say.

Her face cleared as she heard that, and then, in a little, her eyes being still bent steadily on me, reading my very heart, it clouded over again.

“You think her not merely pretty, then, but beautiful?” she asked.

I nodded.

“More beautiful than I?”

’Fore God I denied not my love, though I own I have many a time been less tempted, and yet have lied back and forth like a Frankfort Jew.