ve me your answer at midnight to-night--or--"

He pointed with his hand to the door he had again opened, and with the
fingers of his other hand beat time to the blasphemous chorus which came
belching up from below.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE SERPENT'S STRIFE

Dazed and death-stricken by the horror of the choice which lay before me,
I hastened down the street, hardly waiting for Dessauer, who toiled
vainly after me. I knew not what to do nor where to turn. I could neither
think nor speak. But it chanced that my steps brought me to the house of
the Weiss Thor. Almost without any will of mine own I found myself
raising the knocker of the house of Master Gerard von Sturm. Sir
Respectable instantly appeared. I asked of him if the Lady Ysolinde would
see me--giving my name plainly. For since Duke Otho knew me, there was no
need of concealment any more.

The Lady Ysolinde would receive me.

I followed my conductor, but not this time to the room in which I had
seen her on the occasion of my last visit.

It was in her father's chamber that I met the Princess. The room was as I
had first seen it. Only there was no ascetic old man with keen, deep-set
eyes and receding forehead to rear his head back from the table as though
he would presently strike across it like a serpent from its coil.

For the moment the room was empty, but, ere I had time to look around,
the curtains moved and the Lady Ysolinde appeared. Without entering, she
set a hand on the door-post, and stood poised against the heavy curtain,
waiting for me to speak.

Her face was pale, her thin nostrils dilated. Anger and scorn sat white
and deadly on every feature.

"So," she said, intensely, as I did not speak, "you have come back
already, most noble Hereditary Justicer of the Mark! Even as I told
you--so it is. You come to ask mercy from the woman you despised, from
the woman whose love you refused. You would beg her to spare her enemy.
Ere you go I shall see you on your knees; ah, that will be sweet. I have
been on my knees--can I believe it? Nay, I shall not forget it. I,
Ysolinde of Plassenburg, have pled in vain to you--to you!"

And the accent of chill hatred and malice turned me to stone.

"My lady," said I, "well do you know that I would never ask aught for my
own life, though the Red Axe itself were at my neck. But it is for the
maid I love, for the little child I carried home out of the arms of the
man condemned. I ask for her life, who never wr