“Are you sure of that?”
“Scouts have been sent all through the forest to the south, and have brought us no word of an advancing company. Other scouts have gone up the river as far as Bingen, but everything is quiet, and it would have been impossible for his Lordship to march a considerable number of men from any quarter towards Stolzenfels without one or other of our hundred spies learning of the movement.”
“Then doubtless Mayence depends on his henchman Treves.”
“It would seem so, my Lord.”
“Thank you; that will do.”
The rider saluted, turned his horse towards the north, and galloped away, and a few moments later the little procession came within sight of Stolzenfels, standing grandly on its conical hill beside the Rhine, against a background of green formed by the mountainous forests to the rear.
This conversation, which she could not help but hear, had driven entirely from the mind of Hildegunde the pretty story of the English Princess.
“Why, Guardian!” she said, “we seem to be in the midst of impending civil war.”
The Archbishop smiled.
“We are in the midst of an assured peace,” he replied.