At all hazards she would return. And to this problem she turned her thoughts, knitting her brows and working her fingers nervously through each other.
She had it. There was a way. She would wait till the morrow and in the meantime—sleep.
As she stooped to blow out the last candle, a motto on the stem caught her eye. It ran round the massive silver base of the candelabra in the thick Gothic characters of a hundred years before. Joan took the candle out of its socket and read the inscription word by word—
"DA PACEM, DOMINE, IN DIEBUS NOSTRIS."
It was her own scroll, the motto of the reigning dukes of Hohenstein—a strange one, doubtless, to be that of a fighting race, but, nevertheless, her father's and her own.
Joan held the candle in her hand a long time, looking at it, heedless of the wax that dripped on the floor.
What did her father's motto, the device of her house, upon this Baltic island, far from the highlands of Kernsberg? Had these wastes once belonged to men of her race? And this woman, who so regally played the mistress of this strange heritage, who was she? And what was the secret of the residence of one in this wilderness who, by her manner, might in her time have queened it in royal courts?
And as Joan of Hohenstein blew out the candle she mused in her heart concerning these things.
The Duchess Joan slept soundly, her dark boyish head pillowed on the full rounded curves of an arm thrown behind her. On the little velvet-covered table beside the bed lay her belt and its dependent sword, a faithful companion in its sheath of plain black leather. Under the pillow, and within instant reach of her right hand, was her father's dagger. With it, they said, Henry the Lion had more than once removed an enemy who stood in his way, or more honourably given the coup de grâce to a would-be assassin.