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Updated: September 12, 2025
"Ysolinde," I said, at last, "it is small wonder that I am strongly moved; you have offered me great things to-night. I feel my heart very humble and unworthy. I deserve not your love. I am but a man, a soldier, dull and slow. Were it not for one man and one woman it should be as you say. But Karl of Plassenburg is my good master, my loyal friend. Helene is my true love.
"Then, my lady," I replied, stirred by her persistence, "you would have obeyed me and served me just as you say. Or else I should have broken your spirit as a man is broken on the wheel." It was a prideful saying, and one informed with all ignorance and conceit. Yet the Lady Ysolinde gave a long sigh. "Ah, that would have been sweet, too," she said.
This cannot be life and death to her as it is to me. Her love is not as the love of a woman like Ysolinde. It is not for any one man to possess in monopoly. Though you may deceive yourself and think that it will be fixed and centred on you. But she will never love you as I love you. See, I would knee to you, pray to you on my knees, make myself a suppliant I, Ysolinde that am a princess!
Presently came Jorian and Boris out at a third door, having met somewhere in the back parts of the warren. They came up to the Lady Ysolinde and bowed humbly. "Will your ladyship deign to choose her chamber? They are all empty. Thereafter we shall see that proper furniture, such as the place affords, is provided for your Highness."
Aye, and you yourself, Hugo Gottfried, shall work out in flowing blood and bitter tears the doom of the pale trembling girl for whom you have rejected and despised Ysolinde, Princess of Plassenburg!" How I stumbled down the stairs and found myself outside the house in the Weiss Thor I do not know. Whether the servitor, Sir Respectable, showed me out or not has quite passed from me.
Me you do not love at all." "You will not let me," she said, softly, almost like a shy country maiden. "Ah, if I had, you would have slain me long ere this," said I, "for I read you like a child's horn-book that he plays battledore with. 'Have not love! Have hate. There you are, all in brief, my Lady Ysolinde."
It was a noble home-coming when we returned to Plassenburg victorious and famous; but also there was mourning deep and solemn for the Princess Ysolinde, who by her sacrifice had wrought such great things for the arms of Plassenburg, and had died in the moment of victory.
But every maid of honor who passed noted and knew, lifting eyebrows at one another, I doubt not, as soon as we passed, which thing made me feel like a fool and blush hotly. For I knew that ere they were couched that night every maid of them would tell Helene, and with pleasure in the telling too. "Devil take " I began and stopped. "What did you say?" asked Ysolinde, almost tenderly.
Ravines, like cracks which the sun makes in mud, but a thousand times greater, began to split the hills perpendicularly to their very roots. The path wound perilously this way and that among them. And presently Jorian and Boris rode past me to take the lead, for Ysolinde and Helene were inclined to mistake the way as often as they came to the crossing and interweaving of the intricate paths.
"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.
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