"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.