The girl looked quickly up into the man’s face, and her own went white.  He who stopped her way was Captain Ernst Maenck.  She had not seen the man for two years, but she had good cause to remember him as the governor of the castle of Blentz and the man who had attempted to take advantage of her helplessness when she had been a prisoner in Prince Peter’s fortress.  Now she looked straight into the fellow’s eyes.

“Let me pass, please,” she said coldly.

“I am sorry,” replied Maenck with an evil smile; “but the king’s orders are that you accompany me to Blentz—­the king is there.”

For answer the girl drove her spur into her mount’s side.  The animal leaped forward, striking Maenck’s horse on the shoulder and half turning him aside, but the man clutched at the girl’s bridle-rein, and, seizing it, brought her to a stop.

“You may as well come voluntarily, for come you must,” he said.  “It will be easier for you.”

“I shall not come voluntarily,” she replied.  “If you take me to Blentz you will have to take me by force, and if my king is not sufficiently a gentleman to demand an accounting of you, I am at least more fortunate in the possession of a father who will.”

“Your father will scarce wish to question the acts of his king,” said Maenck—­“his king and the husband of his daughter.”

“What do you mean?” she cried.

“That before you are many hours older, your highness, you will be queen of Lutha.”

The Princess Emma turned toward her tardy escort that had just arrived upon the scene.

“This person has stopped me,” she said, “and will not permit me to continue toward Lustadt.  Make a way for me; you are armed!”

Maenck smiled.  “Both of them are my men,” he explained.

The girl saw it all now—­the whole scheme to lure her to Blentz.  Even then, though, she could not believe the king had been one of the conspirators of the plot.

Weak as he was he was still a Rubinroth, and it was difficult for a Von der Tann to believe in the duplicity of a member of the house they had served so loyally for centuries.  With bowed head the princess turned her horse into the road that led toward Blentz.  Half the troopers preceded her, the balance following behind.

Maenck wondered at the promptness of her surrender.

“To be a queen—­ah! that was the great temptation,” he thought but he did not know what was passing in the girl’s mind.  She had seen that escape for the moment was impossible, and so had decided to bide her time until a more propitious chance should come.  In silence she rode among her captors.  The thought of being brought to Blentz alive was unbearable.

Somewhere along the road there would be an opportunity to escape.  Her horse was fleet; with a short start he could easily outdistance these heavier cavalry animals and as a last resort she could—­she must—­find some way to end her life, rather than to be dragged to the altar beside Leopold of Lutha.