The Lady Ysolinde would receive me.
I followed my conductor, but not this time to the room in which I had seen her on the occasion of my last visit.
It was in her father's chamber that I met the Princess. The room was as I had first seen it. Only there was no ascetic old man with keen, deep-set eyes and receding forehead to rear his head back from the table as though he would presently strike across it like a serpent from its coil.
For the moment the room was empty, but, ere I had time to look around, the curtains moved and the Lady Ysolinde appeared. Without entering, she set a hand on the door-post, and stood poised against the heavy curtain, waiting for me to speak.
Her face was pale, her thin nostrils dilated. Anger and scorn sat white and deadly on every feature.
"So," she said, intensely, as I did not speak, "you have come back already, most noble Hereditary Justicer of the Mark! Even as I told you—so it is. You come to ask mercy from the woman you despised, from the woman whose love you refused. You would beg her to spare her enemy. Ere you go I shall see you on your knees; ah, that will be sweet. I have been on my knees—can I believe it? Nay, I shall not forget it. I, Ysolinde of Plassenburg, have pled in vain to you—to you!"
And the accent of chill hatred and malice turned me to stone.
"My lady," said I, "well do you know that I would never ask aught for my own life, though the Red Axe itself were at my neck. But it is for the maid I love, for the little child I carried home out of the arms of the man condemned. I ask for her life, who never wronged you or any in all this world. You have heard that task which the Duke hath laid on me, because it is my misfortune to be my father's son—I must take away my love's sweet life, or, if I do not—" I could proceed no further for the horror which rose in my heart.
"I know it," she said, calmly; "my father hath told me all."
"Then," cried I, "if the power lie with you, as you hope for mercy to your own soul, be merciful! Save the maiden Helene from the death of shame, and me from becoming her murderer!"