"A lady waits you at the postern," said he, and so tramped his way unceremoniously back to his post.
I knew without any need of telling that it was the Lady Ysolinde. So I
rose, and hastily setting my fingers through my hair, went to the gate.
There, attended by the respectable servitor, was, as I had expected, the
Lady Ysolinde.
"Good-morrow," she said very courteously to me, and I duly returned her greeting with a low obeisance of respect and welcome.
She wore a large garment, fashioned like a man's cloak, over her festal attire—which, with a hood for the head, wholly enveloped her figure and descended to her feet.
"I have come, as I promised, to see the Little Playmate." These were her first words as we paced together across the wide upper court under the wondering eyes of the men of the Duke's body-guard.
"Pray remember, Lady Ysolinde," said I, with much eagerness, "that I have as yet said nothing of the matter to Helene, and that my father only knows that I am to ride to Plassenburg in order to exercise myself in the practice of arms, before becoming his assistant here in the Red Tower and in the Hall of Judgment across the way."
My visitor nodded a little impatiently. She who knew so many things, of a surety might be trusted to understand so much without being told.
In the inner doorway Helene met us. And never had it been my fortune to see the meeting of two such women. The Little Playmate had in her hands the broidered handkerchiefs, the long Flemish gloves, and the little illuminated Book of the Hours which I had given her. She had been about to lay them away together, as is the fashion of women. And when she met the Lady Ysolinde I declare that she looked almost as tall. Helene was perhaps an inch or two less in stature than her visitor, but what she lacked in height she more than made up in the supple erectness of her carriage and the vivid and extraordinary alertness of all her movements.
"Lady Ysolinde," said I, as they met with the mutually level eyeshot of women who measure one another, "this is Helene—whom, for love and kindliness, we of the Wolfsberg call the 'Little Playmate.'"
The daughter of Master Gerard impetuously threw back the gray monk's hood which shrouded the masses of her tawny hair. She put out both hands to Helene, held her a moment at arm's-length to look into her eyes, even as she had done with me, but in a different way. Then, drawing her nearer, she leaned forward and kissed her on the brow and on both cheeks.