ls, and under your
hand the young life ebbs red. But the lips of Ysolinde will be silent!"

"Such knowledge is an easy boast, Lady Ysolinde!" I answered, thinking
to taunt her, that she might reveal whether indeed she had the power
she claimed.

"There," she said, pointing to the great collection of black-bound books
and papers about the walls; "see, the secret is there--the secret for the
lack of which you shall strike your beloved to the death to save her from
the unnamable shame. I know it; my father has revealed it to me. I have
seen the parchment in these hands. But--you shall never hear it, she
never profit by it, and my vengeance shall be sweet--so sweet!"

And she laughed, with a strange crackling laugh that it was a pain to
hear.

"God forgive you, Lady Ysolinde," said I, "if this be so. For if there
be a God, you must burn in Great Hell for this deed you are about to
do. Having had no mercy on the innocent, how shall you ask God to have
mercy on you?"

"I will not ask Him!" she cried. "Instead of puling for mercy I will have
had my revenge. And after that, come earth, heaven, or hell--I shall not
care. All will then be the same to Ysolinde!"

I thought I would try her yet once more.

"The Little Playmate," I said, "the maid whom I have ever loved, though I
am not worthy to touch her, is no chance child, no daughter of the Red
Axe of Thorn. Leopold von Dessauer hath found and sent to Karl the Prince
the full proofs that Helene is the daughter of the last and rightful
Prince, and therefore in her own right Princess of Plassenburg."

"You lie, fool!" she cried--"you lie! You think to frighten me. And even
if it were true--thrice, four times fool to tell me! For shall not I, the
Princess of Plassenburg, the wife of the reigning Prince, stand for my
own name and dignity. I would not help you now though a thousand fair
heads, well-beloved, the desire of men, the envy of women, were to be
rolled in the dust."

"Then farewell, Princess," I cried; "you are wronging to the death of
deaths two that never did you wrong, who loved each other with the love
of man and woman before ever you crossed their paths, and who since then
have only sought your good. You wrong God also, and you lose your soul,
divorcing it from the mercy of the Saviour of men. For be very sure that
with that measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

She did not answer, but stood with her hand still against the door-post,
her hea