"I have no secrets in my life," said Joan; "there is nothing that I would hide from him. Save one thing!" She added the last words in her heart.
"I warn you that the matter concerns yourself very closely," answered the woman somewhat urgently.
"Werner von Orseln is my chief captain!" answered Joan.
"It concerns also your father's honour!"
"He was my father's chief captain before he was mine, and had charge of his honour on twenty fields."
Gratefully and silently Von Orseln lifted his mistress's hand to his lips. The tall woman on the bed smiled faintly.
"It is well that your Highness is so happy in her servants. I also have one who can hold his peace."
She pointed to the Wordless Man, who now stood with the candelabra in his hand, mute and immutable by his mistress's bedhead, as if watching that none should do her harm.
There was an interval of silence in the room, filled up by the hoarse persistent booming of the storm without and the shuddering shocks of the wind on the lonely house. Then the woman spoke again in a low, distinct voice.
"Since it is your right to know my name, I am Theresa von Lynar—who have also a right to call myself 'of Hohenstein'—and your dead father's widow!"