"Ah," she answered, with delicatest meditative inflection, "this is indeed sweet. The mighty is fallen indeed. The proud one is suppliant now. The knee is bent that would not bend. Hearken, you and your puling babe, to the Princess Ysolinde! Were your lives in that glass, to save or to destroy—her life and your suffering—to make or to break, I would fling them to destruction, even as I cast this cup into the darkness!"
And as she spoke the wreathed beaker of Venice glass sped out of the window and crashed on the pavement without.
"Thus would I end your lives," she said, "for the shame that you two put upon me in the day of my weakness."
"Lady," I cried, eagerly, "you do yourself a wrong! Your heart is better than your word. Do this deed of mercy, I beseech you, if so be you can. And my life is yours forever!"
"Your life is mine, you say," cried she; "aye, and that means what? The wind that cries about the house. Your life is mine—it is a lie. Your life and love both are that chit's for whom you have despised—rejected—ME!"
And I grant that at that moment she looked noble enough in her anger as she stood discharging her words at me with hissing directness, like bolts shot twanging from the steel cross-bow.
"And, lest you should think that I have not the power to save you, I will tell you this—when you shall see the neck bared for the blade of the Red Axe, the fine tresses you love, that your eyes look upon with desire, all ruthlessly cut away by the shears of your assistants—ah, I know you will remember then that I, Ysolinde, whom you refused and slighted, had the power in her hand to deliver you both with a word, according to the immaculate laws of the Wolfmark. Aye, and more—power to raise you both to a pinnacle of bliss such as you can hardly conceive. In that hour, when you see me look down upon your anguish, you will know that I can speak the word. You will watch my lips till the axe falls, and under your hand the young life ebbs red. But the lips of Ysolinde will be silent!"
"Such knowledge is an easy boast, Lady Ysolinde!" I answered, thinking to taunt her, that she might reveal whether indeed she had the power she claimed.
"There," she said, pointing to the great collection of black-bound books and papers about the walls; "see, the secret is there—the secret for the lack of which you shall strike your beloved to the death to save her from the unnamable shame. I know it; my father has revealed it to me. I have seen the parchment in these hands. But—you shall never hear it, she never profit by it, and my vengeance shall be sweet—so sweet!"
And she laughed, with a strange crackling laugh that it was a pain to hear.