tient and hope
yet."

Scarce had these words fallen from Tostig's lips, when the chief of his
Danish house-carles came in, and announced the arrival of a bode from
England.

"His news? his news?" cried the Earl, "with his own lips let him speak
his news."

The house-carle withdrew but to usher in the messenger, an Anglo-Dane.

"The weight on thy brow shows the load on thy heart," cried Tostig.
"Speak, and be brief."

"Edward is dead."

"Ha? and who reigns?"

"Thy brother is chosen and crowned."

The face of the Earl grew red and pale in a breath, and successive
emotions of envy and old rivalship, humbled pride and fierce discontent,
passed across his turbulent heart. But these died away as the
predominant thought of self-interest, and somewhat of that admiration for
success which often seems like magnanimity in grasping minds, and
something too of haughty exultation, that he stood a King's brother in
the halls of his exile, came to chase away the more hostile and menacing
feelings. Then Judith approached with joy on her brow, and said:

"We shall no more eat the bread of dependence even at the hand of a
father; and since Harold hath no dame to proclaim to the Church, and to
place on the dais, thy wife, O my Tostig, will have state in far England
little less than her sister in Rouen."

"Methinks so will it be," said Tostig. "How now, nuncius? why lookest
thou so grim, and why shakest thou thy head?"

"Small chance for thy dame to keep state in the halls of the King; small
hope for thyself to win back thy broad earldom. But a few weeks ere thy
brother won the crown, he won also a bride in the house of thy spoiler
and foe. Aldyth, the sister of Edwin and Morcar, is Lady of England; and
that union shuts thee out from Northumbria for ever."

At these words, as if stricken by some deadly and inexpressible insult,
the Earl recoiled, and stood a moment mute with rage and amaze. His
singular beauty became distorted into the lineaments of a fiend. He
stamped with his foot, as he thundered a terrible curse. Then haughtily
waving his hand to the bode, in sign of dismissal, he strode to and fro
the room in gloomy perturbation.

Judith, like her sister Matilda, a woman fierce and vindictive,
continued, by that sharp venom that lies in the tongue of the sex, to
incite still more the intense resentment of her lord. Perhaps some
female jealousies of Aldyth might contribute to increase her own
indignation. But