He did not dawdle over his dressing, yet before it was half accomplished the Landgrave's barber was at his door craving admittance with the implements of his art, and his expert fingers made the colonel's face as fresh and dapper as razor and soap could do.
"The Lady Ottilie von Thüringen bade me tell your lordship that your other baggage has been brought up by your trooper and placed in the little room which is beside this one."
One may be sure that the colonel was not long in entering the room, which a look at the tambour frame, the spinning-wheel, and some other objects, told him was a small boudoir used by the ladies of the castle.
Upon a stout oaken table lay the valises and holsters of the mysterious emissary.
Nigel's hands were upon the straps when the Lady Ottilie came in, partly with the assured air of the woman in her own domain, partly showing the modest shyness of a woman who, liking a man beyond the common measure, seems to crave pardon for intrusion into his company.
"You have slept well? I see you have, tall captain!"
"Thanks to you, Ottilie!" he said, taking her hands and gazing into her proud beautiful face with something of mastery in his grip and in his eyes.
Her own countenance grew cold as she looked far beyond him out upon the pine-clad hills.
"How well you begin the day, sir!" Her glance fell scornfully upon the baggage. "The sack of cities! The plunder of travellers! A strange life!"
There was no need to point the irony, a woman's irony, full of half truth and false inference.
The blood flushed into his face. Then he assumed command over his fiery temper.
"The fortunes of war merely! This von Teschen is I know not what. He comes from Wallenstein."
"From Wallenstein!" She repeated it with eyes again seeking the pine-clothed hill-tops.
"Yes! From that cold seeker after power who would use the Habsburgs for a stepping-stone and play the Cæsar, as you said at Erfurt. I have not forgotten your saying, Ottilie!"
"You are strangely familiar, sir, to a ..." she faltered.
"To a cousin of the Habsburgs," he put in.
"Who told you I was cousin to the Habsburgs?" she asked promptly.
"The Archduchess Stephanie! And in truth did I not know you to be the Lady Ottilie von Thüringen, I could believe Her Highness was here."