my favor rather late in the day, Frode's daughter. It
would have been better if you had shown honor to it when you came in to
me at Scoerstan, by giving me truth in return for friendship."

If she had laughed as though recalling the jest in that scene, it is
possible that he would have struck her with his glove. It was fortunate
that her sense of humor was no more than a bubble on the foam of her
high spirits. Her eyes were dark with earnestness as they sought his.

"Lord King, I was hindered by necessity. Your camp--was it a place
for women? And did not your own mouth tell me that Randalin, Frode's
daughter, should wed the son of Lodbrok if she were alive?"

He struck his knee a ringing slap. "I confess that it is not easy to be
a match for you! But I can tell you one thing which you will not be
able to explain, as heretofore,--and it is a thing which has made me get
bitterest against you. If you had kept your confidence from all it might
have passed for discreetness, but that you should keep it from me to
give it to an Englishman--"

"But I did not give it to the Englishman," she interrupted. For an
instant he stared at her; directly after he burst into a loud laugh.
"Now that is the best thing that has occurred yet! Where you cannot
crawl through, you break through!" He laughed again, and was opening his
mouth to repeat some of the suspicions he had shared with Rothgar when
something about her stopped him,--whether it was the way she bore her
head or something in her deep eyes. Dropping his derision, he spoke
bluntly: "What reason in the world could cause you to behave thus if it
is not that he is your lover?"

The color gathered and spread over her face in maiden shame, until her
tunic became the cruelest of mockeries.

"Short is the reason to tell, Lord King," she said, "it is because I
love him." As he sat regarding her, she put out her hand and played with
a tendril of wild grapevine that hung from the tree beside her, her eyes
following her fingers. "I do not know why I should be ashamed of the
state of my feelings. I should not be able to stand alive before you if
he had not been a better lord to me than you are to English captives;
and he is more gentle and high-minded than any man I ever heard sung of.
Sometimes I think I should have more to be ashamed of if I did not feel
love toward him." A little defiantly, she raised her eyes to his, only
to drop them back to the spray. "But he does not love me. He