The long blue cloak fell to the ground, and the Sparhawk, clad in close-fitting squire's dress, stood before their astonished eyes.
A long low murmur, gathering and sinking, surged about the square. Prince Louis gasped. Margaret clung to her lover's arm, and for the space of a score of seconds the whole world stopped breathing.
Prince Ivan twisted his moustache as if he would pull it out by the roots.
"So," he said, "the Princess is married, is she? And you are her husband? 'Whom God hath joined'—and the rest of it. Well, we shall see, we shall see!"
He spoke gently, meditatively, almost caressingly.
"Yes," cried the Sparhawk defiantly, "we were married yesterday by Father Clement, the Prince's chaplain, in the presence of the most noble Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of Plassenburg!"
"And my wife—the Princess Joan, where is she?" gasped Prince Louis, so greatly bewildered that he had not yet begun to be angry.
Ivan of Muscovy put out his hand.
"Gently, friend," he said; "I will unmask this play-acting springald. This is not your wife, not the woman you wedded and fought for, not the Lady Joan of Hohenstein, but some baseborn brother, who, having her face, hath played her part, in order to mock and cheat and deceive us both!"
He turned again to Maurice von Lynar.