— 18 — THE PURSUIT
OF JACOBEAThe chatelaine of Martzburg sat in the best guest-chamber of a wayside hostel that lay a few hours’ journeying from her home. So swiftly had she fled from Frankfort that its last scenes were still before her eyes like a gorgeous and disjointed pageant; the Emperor stricken down at the feast, the brief, flashing turmoil, Ysabeau’s peerless face, that her own horrid thoughts coloured with a sinister expression, Balthasar of Courtrai bringing the city to his feet — Hugh of Rooselaare snatched away to a dungeon — and over it all the leaping red light of a hundred flambeaux. Presently she passed into the little bedchamber and took up a mirror into which she gazed long and earnestly.
“Is it a wicked face?”
She answered herself — “No, no.”
“Is it a weak face?”
“A
