"We understand one another," replied Thorstenson, nodding. "We, too, are only making a pleasant excursion, to visit our good friends. With Sir Lavé Little, at Flynderborg we can best guard the passage of the Sound."
Drost Peter hesitated, as if half embarrassed by the proposition. "Very good: we can determine on that tomorrow," he said, hastily. "But we must be at our post. Remain you here till the moment this cunning gentleman leaves the palace. I shall send my squire to the quay, to keep an eye upon the strange skiff. Before midnight, I shall be at the palace-gates, with our horses." He pressed Thorstenson's hand, went hastily past the dancers in the saloon, and, as he approached the queen, paused for a moment, to give her a respectful salutation.
"A word, Drost Hessel," said the quean, in an unusually authoritative tone, and seating herself upon a chair, at some distance from the dancers.
Drost Peter stopped, and approached her attentively.
"How do you find your wounded guest?" she inquired. "I regret that I was, in some measure, the cause of his relapse."
"His life is out of danger, your grace. I am at this moment going to visit him."
"Tell him that I am concerned for his mishap," she continued; "so much the more, as I hear it occurred in a chivalrous onset respecting a lady's honour."
Drost Peter blushed deeply. "How, gracious queen?" he stammered: "who has said--"
"That this was the case?" interrupted the queen. "It has just been told me that he had a dispute, on his journey from Middelfert, with a certain conceited young knight, who boasted too loudly and indiscreetly of his good fortune with a lady whose colours he wears, but one who can never consent to be the object of any other favour from a knight than true and discreet service."
"He who told you so, noble queen," replied Drost Peter, with a deep feeling of wounded honour, "I must pronounce a base slanderer, did he even wear a princely crown; and I will make good my assertion by honourable combat for life and death. This much only is true, that our common admiration of the exalted lady whose colours I wear was, undoubtedly, the cause of our untoward strife. But, by my knightly honour, the noble Count Gerhard himself can bear witness that his antagonist was guilty of no indiscretion."