"But this one day, beloved," the Sparhawk was saying. "What is one day among our enemies? Be brave, and then we will ride away together under cloud of night. Von Dessauer will help us. For love and pity Prince Hugo of Plassenburg will give us an asylum. Or if he will not, by my faith! Helene the Princess will—or her kind heart is sore belied! Fear not!"

"I am not afraid—I have never feared anything in my life," answered the Princess Margaret. "But now I fear for you, Maurice. I would give all I possess a hundred times over—nay, ten years of my life—if only you were safe out of this Courtland!"

"It will not be long," said the Sparhawk soothingly. "To-morrow Von Dessauer goes with all his train. He cannot, indeed, openly give us his protection till we are past the boundaries of the State. But at the Fords of the Alla we must await him. Then, after that, it is but a short and safe journey. A few days will bring us to the borderlands of Plassenburg and the Mark, where we are safe alike from prince brother and prince wooer."

"Maurice—I would it were so, indeed. Do you know I think being married makes one's soul frightened. The one you love grows so terrifyingly precious. It seems such a long time since I was a wild and reckless girl, flouting those who spoke of love, and boasting (oh, so vainly!) that love would never touch me. I used to, not so long ago—though you would not think it now, knowing how weak and foolish I am."

The Sparhawk laughed a little and glanced fondly at his wife. It was a strange look, full of the peculiar joy of man—and that, where the essence of love dwells in him, is his sense of unique possession.

"Do keep still," said the Princess suddenly, stamping her foot. "How can I finish the arraying of your locks, if you twist about thus in your seat? It is fortunate for you, sir, that the Duchess Joan wears her hair short, like a Northman or a bantling troubadour. Otherwise you could not have gone masquerading till yours had grown to be something of this length."

And, with the innocent vanity of a woman preferred, she shook her own head backward till the rich golden tresses, each hair distinct and crisp as a golden wire of infinite thinness, fell over her back and hung down as low as the hollows of her knees.

"Joan could not do that!" she cried triumphantly.

"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said the Sparhawk, with appreciative reverence, trying to rise from the low stool in front of the Venice mirror upon which he was submitting to having his toilet superintended—for the first time by a thoroughly competent person.

The Princess Margaret bit her lip vixenishly in a pretty way she had when making a pretext of being angry, at the same time sticking the little curved golden comb she was using upon his raven locks viciously into his head.

"Oh, you hurt!" he cried, making a grimace and pretending in his turn.

"And so I will, and much worse," she retorted, "if you do not be still and do as I bid you. How can a self-respecting tire-woman attend to her business under such circumstances? I warn you that you may engage a new maid."

"Wickedest one!" he murmured, gazing fondly up at Margaret, "there is no one like you!"

"Well," she drolled, "I am glad of your opinion, though sorry for your taste. For me, I prefer the Lady Joan."

"And why?"

"Because she is like you, of course!"

So, on the verge perilous, lightly and foolishly they jested as all those who love each other do (which folly is the only wisdom), while the green Alla sped swiftly on to the sea, and the city in which Death waited for Maurice von Lynar began to hum about them.

As yet, however, there fell no suspicion. For Margaret had warned her bowermaidens that the Princess Joan would need no assistance from them. Her own waiting-women were on their way from Castle Kernsberg. In any case she, Margaret of Courtland, would help her sister in person, as well for love as because such service was the guest's right.

And the Courtland maidens, accustomed to the whims and sudden likings of their impetuous mistress, glad also to escape extra duty, hastened their task of arraying Margaret. Never had she been so restless and exacting. Her toilet was not half finished when she rose from her ebony stool, told her favourite Thora of Bornholm that she was too ignorant to be trusted to array so much as the tow-head of a Swedish puppet, endued herself without assistance with a long loose gown of velvet lined with pale blue silk, and flashed out again to revisit her sister-in-law.

"And do you, Thora, and the others, wait my pleasure in the anteroom," she commanded her handmaidens as she swept through the doorway. "Go barter love-compliments with the men-at-arms. It is all such fumblers are good for!"

Behind her back the tiring maids shrugged shoulders and glanced at each other secretly with lifted eyebrow, as they put gowns and broidered slippers back in their places, to signify that if it began thus they were in for a day of it. Nevertheless they obeyed, and, finding certain young gentlemen of Prince Louis's guard waiting for just such an opportunity without, Thora and the others proceeded to carry out to the letter the second part of the instructions of their mistress.

"How now, sweet Thora of the Flaxen Locks?" cried Justus of GrÄtz, a slender young man who carried the Prince's bannerstaff on saints' days, and practised fencing and the art of love professionally at other times; "has the Princess boxed all your ears this morning, that you come trembling forth, pell-mell, like a flock of geese out of a barn when the farmer's dog is after them?"

There were three under-officers of the guard in the little courtyard. Slim Justus of GrÄtz, his friend and boon companion Seydelmann, a man of fine presence and empty head, who on wet days could curl the wings of his moustaches round his ears, and, sitting a little apart from these, little Johannes Rode, the only very brave man of the three, a swordsman and a poet, yet one who passed for a ninny and a greenhorn because he chose mostly to be silent. Nevertheless, Thora of Bornholm preferred him to all others in the palace. For the eyes of a woman are quick to discern manhood—so long, that is, as she is not in love. After that, God wot, there is no eyeless fish so blind in all the caverns of the Hartz.

With the Northwoman Thora in her tendance of the Princess there were joined Anna and Martha Pappenheim, two maids quicker of speech and more restless in demeanour—Franconians, like all their name, of their persons little and lithe and gay. The Princess had brought them back with her when at the last Diet she visited Ratisbon with her brother.

"Ah, Thora, fairest of maids! Hath an east wind made you sulky this morning, that you will not answer?" languished Justus. "Then I warrant so are not Anna and Martha. My service to you, noble dames!"

"Noble 'dames' indeed—and to us!" they answered in alternate jets of speech. "As if we were apple-women or the fat house-frows of Courtlandish burghers. Get away—you have no manners! You sop your wits in sour beer. You eat frogs-meat out of your Baltic marshes. A dozen dozen of you were not worth one lively lad out of sweet Franconia!"

"Swe-e-et Franconia!" mocked Justus; "why, then, did you not stop there? Of a verity no lover carried you off to Courtland across his saddle-bow, that I warrant! He had repented his pains and killed his horse long ere he smelt the Baltic brine."

"The most that such louts as you Courtlanders could carry off would be a screeching pullet from a farmyard, when the goodman is from home. There is no spirit in the North—save, I grant, among the women. There is our Princess and her new sister the Lady Joan of the Sword Hand. Where will you see their match? Small wonder they will have nothing to say to such men as they can find hereabouts! But how they love each other! 'Tis as good as a love tale to see them——"

"Aye, and a very miracle to boot!" interjected Thora of Bornholm.

The Pappenheims, as before, went on antiphonally, each answering and anticipating the other.

"The Princesses need not any man to make them happy! Their affection for each other is past telling," said Martha.

"How their eyes shine when they look at each other!" sighed Anna, while Thora said nothing for a little, but watched Johannes Rode keenly. She saw he had something on his mind. The Northwoman was not of the opinion which Anna Pappenheim attributed to the Princesses. For the fair-skinned daughters of the Goth, being wise, hold that there is but one kind of love, as there is but one kind of gold. Also they believe that they carry with them the philosopher's stone wherewith to procure that fine ore. After a while Thora spoke.

"This morning it was 'The Princess needs not your help—I myself will be her tire-woman!' I wot Margaret is as jealous of any other serving the Lady Joan——"

"As you would be if we made love to Johannes Rode there!" laughed Martha Pappenheim, getting behind a pillar and peeping roguishly round in order that the poet might have an opportunity of seeing the pretty turn of her ankle.

But little Johannes, who with a nail was scratching a line or two of a catch on a smooth stone, hardly even smiled. He minded maids of honour, their gabble and their ankles, no more than jackdaws crying in the crevices of the gable—that is, all except Thora, who was so large and fair and white that he could not get her quite out of his mind. But even with Thora of Bornholm he did his best.

"That is all very well now," put in vain Fritz Seydelmann, stroking his handsome beard and smiling vacantly; "but wait till these same Princesses have had husbands of their own for a year. Then they will spit at each other and scratch—like cats. All women are cats, and maids of honour the worst of all!"

"How so, Sir Wiseman—because they do not like puppies? You have found out that?" Anna Pappenheim struck back demurely.

"You ask me why maids of honour are like cats," returned Seydelmann complacently (he had been making up this speech all night). "Do they not arch their backs when they are stroked? Do they not purr? Have you not seen them lie about the house all day, doing nothing and looking as saintly as so many abbots at High Mass? But at night and on the tiles—phew! 'tis another matter then."

And having thus said vain moustached Seydelmann, who plumed himself upon his wit, dragged at his moustache horns and simpered bovinely down upon the girls.

Anna Pappenheim turned to Thora, who was looking steadily through the self-satisfied Fritz, much as if she could see a spider crawling on the wall behind him.

"Do they let things like that run about loose here in Courtland?" she asked, with some anxiety on her face. "We have sties built for them at home in Franconia!"

But Thora was in no mood for the rough jesting of officers-in-waiting and princesses' tirewomen. She continued to watch the spider.

Then little Johannes Rode spoke for the first time.

"I wager," he said slowly, "that the Princesses will be less inseparable by this time to-morrow."

"What do you mean, Johannes Rode?" said Thora, with instant challenge in her voice, turning the wide-eyed directness of her gaze full upon him.

The young man did not look at her. He merely continued the carving of his couplet upon the lower stone of the sundial, whistling the air as he did so.

"Well," he answered slowly, "the Muscovite guard of Prince Ivan have packed their own baggage (together with a good deal that is not their own), and the minster priests are warned to hold themselves at the Prince's bidding all day. That means a wedding, and I warrant you our noble Louis does not mean to marry his Princess all over again in the Dom-Kirch of Courtland. They are going to marry the Russ to our Princess Margaret!"

Blonde Fritz laughed loud and long and tugged at his moustache.

"Out, you fool!" he cried; "this is a saint's day! I saw it in the chaplain's Breviary. The Prince goes to shrive himself, and right wisely he judges. I would not only confess, but receive extreme unction as well, before I attempted to come nigh Joan of the Sword Hand in the way of love! What say you, Justus?"

But before his companion could reply, Thora of Bornholm had risen and stolen quietly within.