s, and to die at last with
a lie in your mouth. Again I say--false flower!'"

"You can turn the corners, Sir Juggler, with the cup and ball of words,"
answered Helene. "So much they have already taught you in a court. But
there is one thing that your fine-feathered tutors have not taught
you--to make love to two women in one house and hide it from both of
them. Hot and cold may not come too near each other. They will mix and
make lukewarm of both."

A wise observation, and one that I wished I had made myself.

"May the devil take all princes and princesses!" I began, as I had done
to the Prince himself.

Helene shook her head.

"Hugo," she said, "I was but a simpleton when I came hither, and knew
nothing. Now I am wise, and I know!"

She touched her forehead with her finger, just where the curls were
softest and prettiest.

"Oh, you have learned to be thrice more beautiful than ever you were!" I
said, impetuously.

"So I am often told," answered she, calmly.

"Who dared tell you ?" cried I, quick as fire, laying my hand on my
sword.

"The false common flowers by the wayside tell me!" said Helene, pertly.

"Let them beware, or I will take their heads off for rank weeds!"
I answered.

For at that time, in the Court of Plassenburg, we talked in figures and
romance words. We had indeed become so familiar with the mode that we
could use no other, even in times of earnestness. So that a man would go
to be hanged or married with a quipsome conceit on his lips.

"I think, Sir Janus Double-tongue," she said, "that you would not be the
worse of a little medicine of your own concocting."

And with that she swept her skirts daintily about and tripped down in to
the pleasaunce of flowers, to make which the Prince Karl had brought a
skilled gardener all the way from France.

I prowled about the higher terrace, moodily watching the sky and thinking
on the morrow's weather. And by-and-by I saw one come forth from among
the cropped Dutch hedges, and stride across to where Helene walked with
something white in her hand. I could see her again picking a flower to
pieces, and methought I could hear the words. My jealous fancy conjured
up the ending, "Loves me not--loves me! Loves me not!"

She turned even as she had done to me. The newcomer was that sneering
Court fop, the Count von Reuss, Duke Casimir's nephew--still in hiding
from the wrath of his uncle. For at that time hardly any court in Germany
was without one or