loathe me--and--and----" The Queen, as if conscience-stricken, paused
aghast, kissed devoutly the relic suspended to her rosary, and continued,
with such calmness that it seemed as if two women were blent in one, so
startling was the contrast. "And I have had my reward, but not from the
world! Even so, Harold the Earl, and Earl's son, thou lovest yon fair
child, and she thee; and ye might be happy, if happiness were earth's
end; but, though high-born, and of fair temporal possessions, she brings
thee not lands broad enough for her dowry, nor troops of kindred to swell
thy lithsmen, and she is not a markstone in thy march to ambition; and so
thou lovest her as man loves woman--'less than the ends life lives for!'"

"Sister," said Harold, "thou speakest as I love to hear thee speak--as my
bright-eyed, rose-lipped sister spoke in the days of old; thou speakest
as a woman with warm heart, and not as the mummy in the stiff cerements
of priestly form; and if thou art with me, and thou wilt give me
countenance, I will marry thy godchild, and save her alike from the dire
superstitions of Hilda, and the grave of the abhorrent convent."

"But my father--my father!" cried the Queen, "who ever bended that soul
of steel?"

"It is not my father I fear; it is thee and thy monks. Forgettest thou
that Edith and I are within the six banned degrees of the Church?"

"True, most true," said the Queen, with a look of great terror; "I had
forgotten. Avaunt, the very thought! Pray--fast--banish it--my poor,
poor brother!" and she kissed his brow.

"So, there fades the woman, and the mummy speaks again!" said Harold,
bitterly. "Be it so: I bow to my doom. Well, there may be a time when
Nature on the throne of England shall prevail over Priestcraft; and, in
guerdon for all my services, I will then ask a King who hath blood in his
veins to win me the Pope's pardon and benison. Leave me that hope, my
sister, and leave thy godchild on the shores of the living world."

The Queen made no answer, and Harold, auguring ill from her silence,
moved on and opened the door of the oratory. But the image that there
met him, that figure still kneeling, those eyes, so earnest in the tears
that streamed from them fast and unheeded, fixed on the holy rood--awed
his step and checked his voice. Nor till the girl had risen, did he
break silence; then he said, gently, "My sister will press thee no more,
Edith----"

"I say not that!" exclaimed the Qu