To us, sitting thus hand in hand, there entered the Bishop Peter.
"Hail!" he said, blandly, and in his grandest manner, as we knelt for his benediction; "hail, bride and bridegroom! God has been good to you this day. Bishop Peter, the least of His servants, greets you very well. May you have long life and prosperity unfailing."
I thanked him for his gracious words.
"The folk of the city are full of joy," he said. "I think they would almost proclaim you Duke to-day."
"I desire no such perilous honor," I replied, smiling; "it were indeed an ill-omen to have a Duke habited all in red."
"It is your marriage-dress, Hugo," said Helene; "I will not have you speak against it."
Ever since the strain of the scaffold she had not once broke down—no, nor wept—but only desired to sit very close beside me, touching me sometimes, as if to make sure that I was real. Deliverance had been too great and sudden, and those things which had come so near to us both—Death and the Beyond—had left a salt and bitter spray on our lips.
"And what of the Lady Ysolinde?" I asked of the Bishop.
Now the Bishop Peter was a good man, but, like many of his brethren, a lover of great, swelling words.
"The Lady Ysolinde," he said, oratorically, "by the immediate assistance of the city guard, was placed in a litter and deported, all unconscious as she was, to her father's house in the Weiss Thor, where she still remains. But her most seasonable extract from the laws of the Wolfmark, which so opportunely saved the life of your fair wife, and led to this present happy consummation, I have here by me, even in my hand."