My jealous fancy conjured up the ending, "Loves me not--loves me! Loves me not!" She turned even as she had done to me.

The newcomer was that sneering Court fop, the Count von Reuss, Duke Casimir's nephew--still in hiding from the wrath of his uncle.

For at that time hardly any court in Germany was without one or two of these hangers-on, and a bad, reckless, ill-contriving breed they were at Plassenburg, as doubtless elsewhere.
Then grew my heart hard and bitter, and yet, in a moment afterwards, was again only wistful and sad.
"She had been safer," thought I, "in the old Red Tower than playing flower fancies with such a man!" For I had seen the very devil look out of his eye--which indeed it did as often as he cast it on a fair woman.

In especial, I longed to throttle him each time he turned to watch Helene as she went by.

And here she was walking with him, and talking pleasantly too, in the rose garden of the palace.
"Ah, devil take all princes and princesses!" said I.This one, it is true, was only a count, and disinherited.