The last chant of the monks died away.

The Sabbath service was ended and the Court rose from its place in the Emperor’s chapel, but Jacobea remained on her knees and tried to pray.

The Empress, very fair and childishly sweet, drooping under the weight of her jewelled garments even with three pages to lift her train, raised her brows to see her lady remaining and gave her a little smile as she passed.

The Emperor, dark, reserved, devout and plainly habited, followed with his eyes still on his breviary; he was leaning on the arm of Balthasar of Courtrai; the sun falling slantwise through the high coloured windows made the fair locks and golden clothes of the Margrave one glitter in a dazzling brightness.

Jacobea could not bring her thoughts to dwell on holy things; her hands were clasped on her prie-Dieu, her open book was before her, but her eyes wandered from the altar to the crowd passing down the aisle.

Among the faces that went by she could not but mark the beautiful countenance of Theirry the secretary to the Queen’s Chamberlain; she noticed him, as she always did, for his obvious calm handsomeness, today she noticed further that he looked grieved, distraught and pale. Wondering at this she observed him so intently that his long hazel eyes glanced aside and met hers in an intense gaze, grave and sad.

She thought there was a question or an appeal — some meaning in his look, and she turned her slender neck and stared after him, so that two ladies following smiled at each other.

Theirry kept his eyes fixed on her until he left the C chapel, and a slow colour crept into his cheek.

When the last courtier had glittered away out of the low arched door, Jacobea bent her head and rested her cheek against the top of the high prie-Dieu; her yellow hair, falling from under her close linen cap, hung in a shimmering line over her tight blue velvet gown, her hands were interlaced beside her cheek, and her long skirt rippled over her feet on to the stone pavement.

Could her prayers have been shaped into words they would have been such as these —

“Oh Mary, Empress of Heaven, oh saints and angels, defend me from the Devil and my own wicked heart, shelter me in my weakness and arm me to victory!”

Incense still lingered in the air; it stole pleasantly to her nostrils; she raised her eyes timidly to the red light on the altar, then rose from her knees clasping her breviary to her bosom, and turning she saw Theirry standing inside the door watching her.

She knew that he was waiting to speak to her, and, she knew not why, it gave her a sense of comfort and pleasure.

Slowly she came down the aisle towards him, and as she approached, smiled. He took a step into the church; there was no answering smile on his face.

“Teach me to pray, I beseech you,” he said ardently. “Let me kneel beside you —” She looked at him in a troubled way.

“I? — alas!” she answered. “You do not know me.”

“I know that if any one could lead a soul upwards it would be you.”

Jacobea shook her head sadly.

“Scarcely can I pray for myself,” she answered. “I am weak, unhappy and alone. Sir, whatever your trouble you must not come to me for aid.”

His dark eyes flashed softly.

“You — unhappy? I have ever thought of you as gay and careless as the roses.”

She gazed on him wistfully.

“Once I was. That day I saw you first — do you remember, sir? I often recall it because it seemed — that after that I changed —” She shuddered, and her grey eyes grew wet and mournful. “It was your friend.”

Theirry’s face hardened.

“My friend?”

She leant against the chapel wall and gazed passionately at the Chamberlain’s secretary. “Who is he? Surely you must know somewhat of him.”

“My friend —” repeated Theirry.

“The young scholar,” she said quickly and fearfully, “he — he is in Frankfort now.” “You have seen him?”

She bowed her head. “What does he want with me? He will not let me be in peace — he pursues me with horrible thoughts — he hates me, he will undo my soul —”

She stopped, catching close to her the ivory-covered book and shivering.

“I think,” she said after a second, “he is an evil thing.”

“When did you meet him?” asked Theirry in a low fearful voice.

Jacobea told him of the encounter in the forest; he marked that it was the day of the great tourney, the day when he had last seen Dirk; he remembered certain matters he had uttered concerning Jacobea.

“If he has been tampering with you,” he cried wrathfully, “if he dares —”

“Then you know somewhat of him?” she interrupted in a half horror.

“Ay, to my shame I do,” he answered. “I know him for what he is; if you value your peace, your soul — do not heed him.”

She drew away.

“But you — you — Are you in league with him?”

Theirry groaned and set his teeth.

“He holds me in a mesh of temptation — he lures me into great wickedness.”

Jacobea moved still further back; shrinking from him into the gloom of the chapel. “Oh!” she said. “Who — who is he?”

Theirry lowered his eyes and frowned.

“You must not ask me.” He fingered the base of the pilaster against the door.

“But he troubles me,” she answered intensely. “The thought of him is like some on clinging to my garments to drag me down.”

Theirry lifted his head sharply to gaze at her tall slender figure; but lifted his eyes no higher than her clasped hands that lay over the breviary below her heart.

“How can he or such as he disturb you? What temptation can you be beguiled with?”

And as he saw the delicate fingers tremble on the ivory cover, his soul was hot and sore against Dirk.

“I will not speak of what might beguile me,” said Jacobea in a low Voice. “I dare not speak of it — let it go — it is great sin.”

“There is sin for me also,” murmured Theirry, “but the prize seems almost worth it.”

He bit his finger and stared on the ground; he felt that she shuddered and heard the shiver of her silks against the chapel wall.

“Worth it, you say?” she whispered, “worth it?”

Her tone made him wince; he could fancy Dirk at her shoulder prompting her, and he lifted his head and answered strongly —

“You cannot care to know, and I dare not tell, what has put me in the power of this young scholar, nor what are the temptations with which he enmeshes me — but this you must hear”— his hand was outspread on his bosom, pressing on his heart, his hazel eyes were dilated and intense —“this — I should be his, utterly, wholly his, one with him in evil, if it were not for you and the thought of you.”

She leant her whole weight against the stone wall and stared at him; a shaft of dusty sunlight played on the smooth ivory book and her long fingers; fell, too, glowingly across the blue velvet bosom of her dress; but her throat and face were in shadow.

“You are the chatelaine of Martzburg,” continued Theirry in a less steady voice, “and you do not know me — it is not fit that you should — but twice you have been gentle with me, and if — and if you could so care, for your sake I would shake the clinging devils off — I would live good and humble, and scorn the tempting youth.”

“What must I do to help you?” answered Jacobea. “Alas! why do you rate me so high?” Theirry came a step nearer; he touched the border of her long sleeve.

“Be what you are — that is all. Be noble, pure — ah, sweet I— that seeing you I can still believe in heaven and strive for it.”

She looked at him earnestly.

“Why — you are the only one to care, that I should be noble and sweet. And it would make a difference to you?” Her questioning voice fell wistfully. “Ah, sir — were you to hear a wicked thing of me and know it true — did I become a vile, a hideous creature — would it make a difference?”

“It would — for me — make the difference between hell and paradise.”

She flushed and trembled.

“Certes, you have heartened me — nay, you must not set me in a shrine — but, but —— Oh, sir, honour me and I will be worthy of it.”

She raised an appealing face.

“On my knees,” answered Theirry earnestly, “I will do you worship. I am no knight to wear your colours boldly — but you shall win a fairer triumph than ever graced the jousts, for I will come back to God through you and live my days a repentant man — because of you.”

“Nay — each through the other,” said Jacobea. “I think I too — had...ah, Jesu! fallen — if some one had not cared.”

He paled with pain.

“What did he — that youth — tempt you with?”

“No matter,” she said faintly. “It is over now — I will be equal to your thoughts of me, sir. I have no knight, nor have wished for one — but I will often think of you who have encouraged me in this my loneliness.”

“Please God,” he said. “We both are free of devilry — will you make that a pact with me? that I may think of you as far above it all as is the moon above the mire — will you give me leave to think you always as innocent as I would have my Saint?”

“Your worship, sir, shall make me so,” she answered gravely. “Think no ill of me and I will do no ill.”

He went on his knee and kissed the hem of her soft gown.

“You have saved me,” he whispered, “from everlasting doom.”

As he rose, Jacobea held out her hand and touched him gently on the sleeve.

“God be thanked,” she said.

He bent his head and left her; she drew from her bosom the crucifix that had been her companion in the forest and kissed it reverently, her heart more at ease than since the day when first she met Dirk Renswoude.

Returning to the great hall of the palace with quick resolve to return to Martzburg or to send for Sybilla forming in her mind, she encountered the Empress walking up and down the long chamber discontentedly.

Ysabeau, who affected a fondness for Jacobea, smiled on her indolently, but Jacobea, always a little overawed by her great loveliness, and, in her soul, disliking her, would have passed on. The Empress raised her hand.

“Nay, stay and talk to your poor deserted lady,” she said in her babyish voice. “The Emperor is in his chamber writing Latin prayers — on a day like this!” She kissed her hand to tile sunshine and the flowers seen through the window. “My dames are all abroad with their gallants — and I Hazard what I have been doing?”

She held her left hand behind her and laughed in Jacobea’s face; seen thus in her over-gorgeous clothes, her childlike appearance and beauty giving her an air of fresh innocence, She was not unlike the little image of the Virgin often set above her altars.

“Guess!” she cried again; then, without waiting for an answer — “Catching butterflies in the garden.”

She showed her hand now, and held delicately before Jacobea’s eyes a white net drawn tightly together full of van-coloured butterflies.

“What is the use of them, poor souls?” asked Jacobea.

The Empress looked at her prisoners.

“Their wings are very lovely,” she said greedily. “If I pulled them off would they last? Sewn on silk how they would shimmer!”

“Nay, they would fade,” answered Jacobea hastily.

“Ye have tried it?” demanded the Empress.

“Nay, I could not be so cruel...I love such little gay creatures.”

Reflection darkened Ysabeau’s gorgeous eyes.

“Well, I will take the wings off and see if they lose their brightness.” She surveyed the fluttering victims. “Some are purple...a rare shade!”

Jacobea’s smooth brow gathered in a frown of distress.

“They are alive,” she said, “and it is agreeable to them to live; will you not let them free?” Ysabeau laughed; not at all babyishly now.

“You need not watch me, dame.”

“Your Grace does not consider how gentle and helpless they are, indeed”— Jacobea flushed in her eagerness —“they have faces and little velvet jackets on their bodies.”

Ysabeau frowned and turned away.

“It amuses you to thwart my pleasures,” she answered. She suddenly flung the net at Jacobea. “Take them and begone.”

The chatelaine of Martzburg, knowing something of the Empress, was surprised at this sudden yielding; looking round, however, she learnt the cause of it. The Margrave of East Flanders had entered the hall.

............