He turned to me.
"With you, Hugo, it is a thing different; you were born to that to which you are born. And to that, as I read your horoscope, you must one day return. But in the mean time care well for the maid. I lend her to you. I give her into your hand. Cherish her as your chiefest treasure. Let her enemies be yours, and if harm come to her through your neglect, slay yourself ere you come again before me. For, by the Lord God of all Righteous Judgment, I will have no mercy!"
I saw the eyes of the Lady Ysolinde glitter like those of the snake in her belt as thus my father delivered Helene over to me.
But my father had yet more to say.
"And if any," he went on, in a deep, still voice, keeping his hand upon the downcast head of the Little Playmate—"if any, great or small, prince or pauper, harm so much as a hair of this fair head, by the great God who wields His Axe over the universe and sits in the highest Halls of Judgment, whose servant I am—I, Gottfried Gottfried, swear that he shall taste the vengeance of the Red Axe and drink to the dregs the cup of agony in his own blood!"
So saying, he kissed Helene and stalked out without turning his head or making any further obeisance or farewell.
We sat mazed and confounded after his departure.
The Lady Ysolinde it was who first recovered herself. She put out a kindly hand to Helene, who stood wet-eyed and drooping by the window, looking out upon the roofs of Thorn, though well I wot she saw nothing of spire, roof, or pinnacle.
"God do so to me and more also," she said, in a low, solemn voice, "if I too keep not this charge."
And I think for the moment she meant it. The trouble was that the Lady Ysolinde could not mean one thing for very long at a time. As, indeed, shall afterwards appear.