your spirit as a man is broken on the wheel."

It was a prideful saying, and one informed with all ignorance and
conceit. Yet the Lady Ysolinde gave a long sigh.

"Ah, that would have been sweet, too," she said. "You are the one man I
should have delighted to call master, to have done your bidding. That had
been a thing different indeed! But you love me not. You love a chit, a
chitterling--a pretty thing that can but peep and mutter, whose
heart's depths I have sounded with my finger-nail, and whose babyish
vanity I have tickled with a straw."

This was enough and too much.

"Madam," said I, "the clear stars are not fouled by throwing filth at
them, nor yet the Lady Helene--whom I do acknowledge that with all my
heart I love--by the speaking of any ill words. You do but wrong
yourself, most noble lady. For your heart tells you other things, both of
the maid I love and of me that am her true servant, and, if I might, your
true friend."

The Princess reached out her hand, looking, not with anger, but rather
wistfully at me, like a mother at a son who goes to his death with
blasphemy on his lips.

"Forgive me," she said, gently. "I would not at the last have you go
forth thinking ill of me. Indeed, you think all too well, and make me do
things that are better than mine intent, because I know that you expect
them of me. I have done many ill and cruel things in my poor life, simply
from idleness and the empty, unsatisfied heart. If you had loved me or
taught me or driven me, I might have tried better things. Perhaps in the
end, for great love's sake, I may yet do one worthy deed that shall blot
out all the rest. Farewell!"

And without another spoken word she moved away, and left me in the green
pleasaunces of the garden, with my heart riven this way and that, scarce
knowing what I did or where I stood.

CHAPTER XXXVII

CAPTAIN KARL MILLER'S SON

Black, blank, chill, confining night shut us in as Leopold Dessauer and I
rode out of Plassenburg. Our horses had been made ready for us at the
little water-gate in the lower garden. Fain would I have taken also
Jorian and Boris, but on this occasion the fewer the safer. For to enter
Thorn was to go with lighted matches into a powder-magazine.

The rushes in the river rustled dry and cold along the brink. The leaves
of the linden-trees chuckled overhead, rubbing their palms together
spitefully. There was mockery of our foolhardy enterprise in the soft
whisperi