"Only Alt Pikker, my second captain!" said the Sparhawk.
Again the tones of his voice seemed to touch her woman's ear with some subtile perplexity even in the midst of her abstraction. Margaret turned her eyes again upon Maurice, and kept them there till he shivered in the flowing, golden-belted dress of velvet which sat so handsomely upon his splendid figure.
"And your chief captain, Von Orseln?" The Princess seemed to be meditating again, her thoughts far from the rush of the Alla beneath and from the throat voice of the false Princess before her.
"Von Orseln has gone to the Baltic Edge to raise on my behalf the folk of the marshes!" answered the Sparhawk warily.
"Then there was——" the Princess hesitated, and her own voice grew a trifle lower—"the young man who came hither as Dessauer's secretary—what of him? The Count von Löen, if I mistake not—that was his name?"
"He is a traitor!"
The Princess turned quickly.
"Nay," she said, "you do not think so. Your voice is kind when you speak of him. Besides, I am sure he is no traitor. Where is he?"
"He is in the place where he most wishes to be—with the woman he loves!"
The light died out of the bright face of the Princess Margaret at the answer, even as a dun snow-cloud wipes the sunshine off a landscape.