yes to hers, and if she had seen their look she might have answered
differently. But her gaze was still on the ring; and as she felt him
start, that impish dimple peeped out of her cheek.

"Is it not a handsome thing?" she said. "It looks to be a ring to belong
to a giant."

"Is it--Rothgar's?"

The dimple deepened as she heard his tone. For all its absurdity, there
must be some truth in Dearwyn's witch-skill. She was obliged to droop
her lashes very low to hide the mischief in her eyes. "It is not
his now," she murmured. "It has been given me--to keep me in mind
of something." But after that her amusement grew too strong to be
repressed, and she looked up at him with over-brimming laughter. "There
will soon be too much of this! Sweetheart mine, are you in truth so easy
to plague?"

Laughing she looked up at him, but, even as his face was clearing,
something in it struck her so strangely that her laughter died and she
bent toward him in sudden gravity. "Lord! It is not possible for you to
believe that I could love Rothgar!" Her manner of uttering that one word
made it speak more scorn than volumes might have done.

For a while he only looked at her, that strange radiance growing in his
face; but suddenly he caught her to him and kissed her so passionately
that he hurt her, and his voice was as passionate as his caress. "No,"
he told her over and over. "Would I have offered you my love had I
believed that? No! No!"

Satisfied, she made no more resistance but clung to him with her arms
as she had clung to him with her heart since the first hour he came into
her life. Only, when at last he released her, she took the ring from her
finger and thrust it into his hand with a little gesture of distaste.
"I shall be thankful if I do not have to see it again. It is Elfgiva's,
that Canute gave her after he had won it from Rothgar in some wager. It
is her wish that you bring it to the King again by slipping it into
his broth or his wine where he will come upon it after he has finished
feeding and is therefore amiable--" She stopped to laugh merrily in his
face. "See how the very naming of the King turns you grave again!
When one gets a Marshalship, one becomes more and more stark." Grown
mischievous again in her happiness, she mocked him with courtesies.

But it was only very faintly that he smiled at her fooling, as he held
the spiral against the light and shook it beside his ear. "Is there
no more to the message," he said