WHO IS YOLANDA?
Next morning Yolanda came to breakfast smiling, bedimpled, and sparkling as a sunlit mountain brook. Max, who was gloomy, took her sprightliness amiss, thinking, no doubt, that her life also ought to be darkened by the cloud that he thought was over-shadowing him. There was no doubt in my mind that Yolanda had inspired a deep and lasting passion in Max, though he was, I hoped, mistaken in the belief that it would darken his life. But I would not give a kreutzer for a young fellow who does not feel that life is worthless without his lady-love.
Yolanda did not take kindly to clouds of any sort, and she soon scattered those that Max had conjured up. After we had resumed our journey Max fell back to ride with her.
"Sir Max," she said, "if you allow yourself to become The Knight Doleful, I will not only cease having speech with you, but I will laugh at you."
The latter she did then and there. This from a burgher girl of Peronne to a prince of the House of Hapsburg! The good duke and duchess would have swooned with horror had they known of it. Max was inclined to be angry, but, unfortunately for his ill-humor, he caught a glimpse of her face, and he, too, laughed.
"I fear I am a great fool," he said. Yolanda did not contradict him. She simply shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "That unfortunate condition is apt, at times, to overtake the best of men."
Soon our little cavalcade came together, and we rode, laughing, and all talking at once, for a league or more.
Our road had parted from the river at one of its great bends, and for an hour we had been slowly climbing a long hill. When we reached the top, we unsaddled for dinner in the shade of a tree by the wayside. A hundred yards from the road was a dense copse of undergrowth and bushes on the edge of the forest. Off to the east flowed the majestic Rhine, a league distant, and to the north ran the road like a white ribbon, stretching downhill to the valley and up again to the top of another hill, distant perhaps a half-league.
While we were eating dinner, a cloud of dust arose from the hilltop north of us, and immediately began descending in our direction. At intervals, in the midst of the dust-cloud, we caught glimpses of men on horseback riding at full gallop. This unwelcome sight brought our dinner to an end. I at once ordered the sumpter mules taken to the copse on the forest's edge, and directed every man to look to his arms and armor. I asked Twonette and Yolanda to go with the mules, and Yolanda became angry.
"I go with the mules? Sir Karl, you forget yourself," cried the young lady, drawing herself up with the dignity of a princess royal. Twonette ran as rapidly as her feet could take her to seek refuge with the mules, but Yolanda, with flashing eyes, declared: