Many things I might have wished to say and do with that slender figure and lissome waist so near me.

But I knew not how to begin.

Yet I think the desire came not so much from love or passion, but rather from a natural longing to explore those mysteries concerning which I had read so much after Friar Laurence had done me the service of teaching me French.

But it was well that stupidity was my friend.

For rebounding like a vain, upstart young monkey from my mood of self-depreciation, I must needs hold it for certain that all was within my grasp, and that the Lady Ysolinde expected as much of me, which thing would have wrought my downfall.
"Yon ride soon to Plassenburg, I hear," she said, after she had looked at me a long time steadily with the emerald eyes shining upon me.