"In all liege service, yes, your Highness! Even to the death! Have I not fought for you at Breitenfeld? Have I not felt the Lady Ottilie pour out hot scorn upon me almost to the limit of man's forbearance, because I served the Emperor, and in serving him, your Highness?"
"I should not have deemed you one to brook over much scorn," she said, veiling her eyes, then flooding his face with their searching gaze.
"Nor am I by nature very patient, your Highness!"
"Then it must be that you love Ottilie! That if I can claim your service, even your life, she, this meddler with the Lutherans, can claim and hold your love?" The Archduchess spoke in low tones. Again Nigel could almost persuade himself that it was Ottilie who spoke, wishful to hear his avowal of passion. And yet it was not Ottilie.
"Why should you begrudge her so small a gift, or rather so poor an offering, for I know not if she has accepted it?" he urged.
"Because a princess can never be sure that she commands love. Service she knows she can command, even to the death. Men will spend themselves for any bubble they call honour or duty. I grudge Ottilie your love. I grudge any woman that is loved, her lover's love." The Archduchess spoke with heat.
Nigel rejoiced that the Archduchess made it clear to him that in seeking the heart of Ottilie he was not spurning hers; that she was only giving tongue to the loneliness of rank. For in truth in the immediate presence of the Archduchess, radiant, full of charm, he felt the memory of Ottilie pale; and, loyal as he tried to be to his colours, whether in love or war, he would have been more than man not to have felt an answering emotion had anything she said given shape to the idea that she too loved him.
So much they were able to say amid the ceremonious tumult of the arrivals.
Supper was set and the good things of Halberstadt were lavished upon the officers who had accompanied the retreat. It was not long before the Archduchess and her attendant ladies left the hall for their own chambers. And it was not till the morrow that Nigel again saw the Archduchess.
The circumstances of a common peril loosened the observances of ceremony and made it possible for them to meet, after Nigel had set in motion the springs of military duty which were immediately necessary. As before at Vienna the Archduchess received him in the gardens of the palace, but this time in broad daylight.