"And why!" said Joan a little haughtily. For she did not like Conrad's sister to be treated lightly even by her chief captain.
"Ah, love—love," said Werner, nodding his head sententiously. "It is well, my lady, that I ever trained you up to care for none of these things. Teach a maid to fence, and her honour needs no champion. Give her sword-cunning and you keep her from making a fool of herself about the first man who crosses her path. Strengthen her wrist, teach her to lunge and parry, and you strengthen her head. But you do credit to your instructor. You have never troubled about the follies of love. Therefore are you our own Joan of the Sword Hand!"
Joan sighed another sigh, very softly this time, and her eyes, being turned away from Von Orseln, were soft and indefinitely hazy.
"Yes," she answered, "I am Joan of the Sword Hand, and I never think of these things!"
"Of course not," he cried cheerfully; "why should you? Ah, if only the Princess Margaret had had an ancient Werner von Orseln to teach her how to drill a hole in a fluttering jackanapes! Then we would have had less of this meauling apron-string business!"
"Silence," said Joan quickly. "She is here."
And the Princess came running in with joy in her face. Instinctively Werner drew back into the shadow of the window curtain, and the smile on his face grew more grimly experienced than ever.
"Oh, Joan," cried the Princess breathlessly, "he had not really gone off without bidding me goodbye. You remember I said that I could not believe it of him, and you see I was right. One cannot be mistaken about one's husband!"
"No?" said Joan interrogatively.
"Never—so long as he loves you, that is!" said Margaret, breathless with her haste; "but when you really love any one, you cannot help getting anxious about them. And then Ivan or Louis might have sent some one to carry him off again to tear him to pieces. Oh, Joan, you cannot know all I suffered. You must be patient with me. I think it was seeing him bound and about to die that has made me like this!"