"God forgive you, Lady Ysolinde," said I, "if this be so. For if there be a God, you must burn in Great Hell for this deed you are about to do. Having had no mercy on the innocent, how shall you ask God to have mercy on you?"
"I will not ask Him!" she cried. "Instead of puling for mercy I will have had my revenge. And after that, come earth, heaven, or hell—I shall not care. All will then be the same to Ysolinde!"
I thought I would try her yet once more.
"The Little Playmate," I said, "the maid whom I have ever loved, though I am not worthy to touch her, is no chance child, no daughter of the Red Axe of Thorn. Leopold von Dessauer hath found and sent to Karl the Prince the full proofs that Helene is the daughter of the last and rightful Prince, and therefore in her own right Princess of Plassenburg."
"You lie, fool!" she cried—"you lie! You think to frighten me. And even if it were true—thrice, four times fool to tell me! For shall not I, the Princess of Plassenburg, the wife of the reigning Prince, stand for my own name and dignity. I would not help you now though a thousand fair heads, well-beloved, the desire of men, the envy of women, were to be rolled in the dust."
"Then farewell, Princess," I cried; "you are wronging to the death of deaths two that never did you wrong, who loved each other with the love of man and woman before ever you crossed their paths, and who since then have only sought your good. You wrong God also, and you lose your soul, divorcing it from the mercy of the Saviour of men. For be very sure that with that measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
She did not answer, but stood with her hand still against the door-post, her head raised, and her lips curling scornfully, looking after me as I retired with a smiling and malicious pleasure.
So, without further speech, I went out from the presence of the Lady
Ysolinde. And thus she had the first part of her revenge.