"Habsburg," she said. "How came you by it?"
"In Magdeburg a lady tried to stab me with it."
As her fingers closed round the hilt Nigel seemed to see the hand again just as he saw it and grasped it at Magdeburg.
"I wonder whether it was my cousin Ottilie von Thüringen," she said. "She is suspected of strong sympathies for the Lutherans."
"Does she resemble your Highness in person?"
"Yes! She did as a girl! There is a coldness between the families and we do not meet as we used. Some say she is singularly like me. Her mother was sister to mine! I remember myself giving her this dagger for a gift. 'Tis very strange it should come into your hands and your eyes say that you wish it back in your own keeping. Colonel Nigel! I shall be jealous if you love my cousin Ottilie! It is the way of princesses!"
Her eyes fastened upon Nigel's: and his, fighting this uneven battle, drooped.
"I do not know if I love her! But I love none other! And then she is not a princess!"
"And one does not love the stars!" she interposed, rather with a touch of malice. "So you can worship but not love me, Colonel Nigel!"
"What can I say, your Highness? I must be true at all costs!"
A mist came over her fine eyes. She gave him her hand. This time he bowed and kissed it.
With a quick movement she turned, walked into the shadows, and he saw no more of her that night nor till he departed for his journey.
NIGEL'S INSTRUCTIONS, WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN.
It is not too much to say that the Emperor Ferdinand and the Jesuits, which may be taken to include the Duke of Bavaria, were intoxicated by the fall of Magdeburg. Ferdinand was bent on carrying out his Edict, bent on restoring to the Church of Rome its ancient possessions, bent on levelling the edifice of Protestantism till not one stone should be left in company with another, as witness that within the bounds of the empire there had once been such a heresy as Lutheranism, or such another heresy as Calvinism. Rather a tractless desert, which, for lack of a better name, he could call a Catholic state, than well-cultivated provinces, studded thickly with prosperous towns and cities, wherein men and women worshipped their Maker after any other fashion than his own. It was a dream of fanaticism.