CHAPTER XXI

Hilda followed Verus's retreating figure with a long, long look; at
last, with a slight shake of her beautiful head, she went up to Gelimer
and said: "Do not be angry, my King, if I ask a question which nothing
gives me the right to utter, except my anxiety for your welfare, and
that of all our people."

"And my love for you, brave sister-in-law," replied Gelimer, gently
stroking her flowing golden hair, and seating himself on the couch
again. "For," he added, smiling, "though you are a wicked pagan and
often cherish--as I well know--secret resentment, nay, animosity,
against me, I love you, foolish, impetuous young heart."

She sank down at his feet, on a high, soft cushion covered with leopard
skins, while Gibamund paced slowly up and down the spacious hall, often
gazing out through the lofty arched window over the wide sea. No light
was burning in the apartment; but the full moon, which meanwhile had
risen above the dark flood and the harbor wall, poured in the full
splendor of her rays, which, falling on the features of the three noble
human beings, illumined them with a spectral light.

"I will not," Hilda began, "as Zazo and my Gibamund have repeatedly
done, until you wrathfully forbade it, warn you against this priest,
who--"

With neither impatience nor anger, Gelimer interrupted: "Who first
discovered the wiles of Pudentius; who revealed to us the treachery of
Hilderic; to whom alone I am indebted for my escape from assassination
that night; who has saved the kingdom of the Vandals from the snare."

Gibamund paused in his walk.

"Yes, it is true. I had almost said, _unfortunately_ true. For I would
rather have owed it to any other man."

"It is so strikingly true that even our Zazo, who at first accused him
harshly to me, could scarcely find any objection to mutter, when I took
the brilliant man among my councillors and intrusted to him (for he is
an expert in letter-writing) the care of the correspondence. And how
unweariedly he has toiled since, priest and chancellor at the same
time! I marvel at the number of papers he lays before me every morning;
I do not believe he sleeps three hours."

"Men who neither sleep nor fight, drink nor kiss, are unnatural to me,"
cried Gibamund, laughing.

"I do not warn," said Hilda, "but I ask"--she laid her hand lightly on
the King's arm--"how does it happen, how is it possible, that you, the
warlike Prince of the Vandals, lo