e Elfrida of her great days--the calm,
proud-faced, beautiful woman who was once Edgar's queen.

XI

The time had arrived when Elfrida was deprived of this her one relief
and consolation--her rides on the Downs and the exercise of her religion
at the temple of the Great Stones--when in the second winter of her
residence at Amesbury there fell a greater darkness than that of winter
on England, when the pirate kings of the north began once more to
frequent our shores, and the daily dreadful tale of battles and
massacres and burning of villages and monasteries was heard throughout
the kingdom. These invasions were at first confined to the eastern
counties, but the agitation, with movements of men and outbreaks of
lawlessness, were everywhere in the country, and the queen was warned
that it was no longer safe for her to go out on Salisbury Plain.

The close seclusion in which she had now to live, confined to house and
enclosed land, affected her spirits, and this was her darkest period,
and it was also the turning-point in her life. For I now come to the
strange story of her maid Editha, who, despite her humble position in
the house, and albeit she was but a young girl in years, one, moreover,
of a meek, timid disposition, was yet destined to play an exceedingly
important part in the queen's history.

It happened that by chance or design the queen's maid, who was her
closest attendant, who dressed and undressed her, was suddenly called
away on some urgent matter, and this girl Editha, a stranger to all, was
put in her place. The queen, who was in a moody and irritable state,
presently discovered that the sight and presence of this girl produced a
soothing effect on her darkened mind. She began to notice her when the
maid combed her hair, when sitting with half-closed eyes in profound
dejection she first looked attentively at that face behind her head in
the mirror and marvelled at its fairness, the perfection of its lines
and its delicate colouring, the pale gold hair and strangely serious
grey eyes that were never lifted to meet her own.

What was it in this face, she asked herself, that held her and gave some
rest to her tormented spirit? It reminded her of that crystal stream of
sweet and bitter memories, at Wherwell, on which she used to gaze and in
which she used to dip her hands, then to press the wetted hands to her
lips. It also reminded her of an early morning sky, seen beyond and
above the green dew-w