You are the servant of the strange Doctor?" said the voice of the
servitor, Sir Respectable.

"That I am, as by this time you may have seen!" answered I, for I was
in no mood of mere politeness. I was venturing my life in the house of
mine enemy, and, at least, it would be no harm if I put a bold face on
the matter.

He opened the door, and again the same curious perfume was wafted down
the passages--something that I had never felt either in the Wolfsberg nor
yet even in the women's chambers of the Palace of Plassenburg.

At the door of the little room in which she had first received me so long
ago, the Lady Ysolinde was waiting for me.

She did not shut the door till Sir Respectable had betaken him down again
to his own place. Then quite frankly and undisguisedly she took my hand,
like one who had come to the end of make-believe.

"I knew you to-day in your disguise," she said; "it is an excellent one,
and might deceive all save a woman who loves. Ah, you start. It might
deceive the woman you love, but not the woman that loves you. I am not
the Princess to-night; I am Ysolinde, the Woman. I have no restraints, no
conventions, no laws, no religions to-night--save the law of a woman's
need and the religion of a woman's passion."

I stood before her, scarce knowing what to say.

"Sit down," she said; "it is a long story, and yet I will not weary you,
Hugo--so much I promise you."

I made answer to her, still standing up.

"To-night, my lady, after what you know, you will not be surprised that I
can think of only one thing. You know that to-day--"

"I know," she said, cutting me short, as if she did not wish to
listen to that which I might say next; "I know--I was present in the
Judgment Hall."

"Then, being Master Gerard's daughter, you knew also the sentence before
it was pronounced!" I said, bitterly, being certain as that I lived that
the paper from which the Duke Otho read had been penned at this very
house of the Weiss Thor in which I now sat.

Ysolinde reached a slender hand to me, as was often her wont instead
of speech.

"Be patient to-night," she said; "I am trying hard to do that which is
best--for myself first, as a woman must in a woman's affairs. But, as God
sees me, for others also! You are a man, but I pray you think with
fairness of the fight I, a lonely, unloved woman, have to fight."

"Will they carry out the terrible sentence?" said I, eagerly. For I
judged that she must be in her fathe