When the Prince was summoned to Copenhagen by his father's failing health, Frau Sigbrit and her daughter accompanied him, one in her way as indispensable as the other; and when King James died and Christian reigned in his stead, the women of the Bergen market were installed in a splendid suite of apartments in his palace. So hopeless was his subjection to both that his subjects, with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders, accepted them as inevitable. For a time, it is true, their supremacy was in danger. Now that Christian was King, it became important to provide him with a Queen, and a suitable consort was found for him in the Austrian Princess, Isabella, sister of the Emperor Charles V., a well-gilded bride, distinguished alike for her beauty and her piety. Isabella, however, was one of the last women to tolerate any rivalry in her husband's affection, and before the marriage-contract was sealed, she had received a solemn pledge from Christian's envoys that his relations with the pretty flower-girl should cease. But even Christian's word of honour was seldom allowed to bar the way to his pleasure, and within a few weeks of Isabella's bridal entry into Copenhagen, Dyveke and her mother resumed their places at his Court, to his Queen's unconcealed disgust and displeasure. More than this, he established them in a fine house near his palace gates; and when he was not dallying there with Dyveke, he was to be found by her side at the Castle of Hvideur, of which he had made her chatelaine. The remonstrances of Valkendorf and his other ministers were made to deaf ears; his wife's reproaches and tears were as futile as the strongly worded protestations of his Royal relatives. Pleadings, arguments, and threats were alike powerless to break the spell Dyveke and her mother had cast over him. But Dyveke's day of empire was now drawing to a tragic close. One day, after eating some cherries from the palace gardens, she was seized with a violent pain. All the skill of the Court doctors could do as little to assuage her agony as to save her life; and within a few hours she died, clasped to the breast of her distracted lover! Such was Christian's distress that for a time his reason trembled in the balance. He vowed that he would not be separated from her even by death; he threatened to put an end to his own life since it had been reft of all that made it worth living. And when cooler moments came, he swore a terrible vengeance against those who had robbed him of his beloved. She had been poisoned beyond a doubt; but who had done the dastardly deed?