"Love of mine," I said, "I have but an hour or less to speak with you—and ah! such terrible things, such inconceivable things, to say; a horror to reveal such as never lover had to tell his love before."
She drew one of my hands down and softly patted her breast with it.
"Fear not," she said; "tell it Helene. If it be true that love conquers all, your little lass can bear it!"
"I came," said I, "with purpose to see you, and by treachery (it skills not to ask whose) I was taken at my dead father's bedside."
"Our father dead?" she cried, going a step away to look at me, but coming back again immediately; "then there are but you and me in the world, Hugo!"
"Aye," said I, "but how can I tell you the rest? My father died like a man, and then they took me, still holding the dead in my arms. I was confronted with a fiend of hell in the likeness of Duke Otho."
As I mentioned the Duke's name I could feel her shudder on my neck.
"And—But I cannot tell you what he has bidden me do, under penalties too fearful to conceive or speak of."
She put her hands up, and gently, timidly, lovingly stroked my cheek.
"Dear love, tell me! Tell the Little Playmate!" she said, as simply and sweetly as if she had been coaxing me to whisper to her some lightest childish secret of our plays together in the old Red Tower.