's affection, and
before the marriage-contract was sealed, she had received a solemn
pledge from Christian's envoys that his relations with the pretty
flower-girl should cease.

But even Christian's word of honour was seldom allowed to bar the way to
his pleasure, and within a few weeks of Isabella's bridal entry into
Copenhagen, Dyveke and her mother resumed their places at his Court, to
his Queen's unconcealed disgust and displeasure. More than this, he
established them in a fine house near his palace gates; and when he was
not dallying there with Dyveke, he was to be found by her side at the
Castle of Hvideur, of which he had made her chatelaine.

The remonstrances of Valkendorf and his other ministers were made to
deaf ears; his wife's reproaches and tears were as futile as the
strongly worded protestations of his Royal relatives. Pleadings,
arguments, and threats were alike powerless to break the spell Dyveke
and her mother had cast over him. But Dyveke's day of empire was now
drawing to a tragic close. One day, after eating some cherries from the
palace gardens, she was seized with a violent pain. All the skill of the
Court doctors could do as little to assuage her agony as to save her
life; and within a few hours she died, clasped to the breast of her
distracted lover!

Such was Christian's distress that for a time his reason trembled in the
balance. He vowed that he would not be separated from her even by death;
he threatened to put an end to his own life since it had been reft of
all that made it worth living. And when cooler moments came, he swore a
terrible vengeance against those who had robbed him of his beloved. She
had been poisoned beyond a doubt; but who had done the dastardly deed?

The finger of suspicion pointed to the steward of his household, Torbern
Oxe, who, it was said, had been among the most ardent of Dyveke's
admirers, and had had the audacity to aspire to her hand. It was even
rumoured that he had had more intimate relations with her. Such were the
stories and suspicions that passed from mouth to mouth in Christian's
clouded Court before Dyveke's beautiful body was cold; and such were the
tales which Hans Faaborg, the King's Treasurer, poured into his master's
ears.

Hans Faaborg little dreamt that when he was thus trying to bring about
the downfall of his rival he was sealing his own fate. Christian lent an
eager ear to the stories of his steward's iniquities; but, when he found
there