So he addressed himself to making the discovery.
"My lady," he said, "you are our guest. Will you deign to tell us how more formally we may address you? You are no Courtlander, as all may see!"
"I am a Dane," she answered smiling; "I am called the Lady Theresa. For the present let that suffice. I am venturing much to come to you thus! My father and brothers built a castle upon the Baltic shore on land that has been the inheritance of my mother. Then came the reivers of Kernsberg and burned the castle to the ground. They burned it with fire from cellar to roof-tree. And they slackened the fire with the blood of my nearest kindred!"
As she spoke Theresa's eyes glittered and altered. The Prince read easily the meaning of that excitement. How was he to know all that lay behind?
"And so," he said, "you have no good-will to the Princess Joan of Hohenstein—and Courtland. Or to any of her favourers?" he added after a pause.
At the name the grey-headed man, who had been sitting unmoved by the table with his elbow on the board, raised a strangely wizened face to Theresa's.
"What"—he said, in broken accents, stammering in his speech and grappling with the words as if, like a wrestler at a fair, he must throw each one severally—"what—who has a word to say against the Lady Joan, Princess of Courtland? Whoso wrongs her has me to reckon with—aye, were it my brother Ivan himself!"
"Not I, certainly, my good Louis," answered Ivan easily. "I would not wrong the lady by word or deed for all Germany from Bor-Russia to the Rhine-fall!"
He turned to Alexis the Deacon, who was at his elbow.
"Fill up his cup—remember what I bade you!" he said sharply in an undertone.