United States or Slovakia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I gave him nothing a maiden might not give," cried Torfrida, so fiercely that the Queen-Countess recoiled somewhat. "I never said that you did, girl. Your love you gave him. Can you deny that?" Torfrida laughed bitterly: her Southern blood was rising. "I put my love out to nurse, instead of weaning it, as many a maiden has done before me.
"Countesses and Ladies," said the Queen-Countess, "there will he two weddings to-morrow. The first will be that of my son Robert and my pretty Lady Gertrude here. The second will be that of my pretty Torfrida and Hereward." "And the second bride," said the Countess Gertrude, rising and taking Torfrida in her arms, "will be ten times prettier than the first.
But Hereward it was; and regardless of all beholders, she lay upon his neck, and never stirred nor spoke. "I call you to witness, ladies," cried the Queen-Countess, "that I am guiltless. She has given herself to this beggar-man of her own free will. What say you?" And she turned to Torfrida's mother. Torfrida's mother only prayed and whimpered.
The etiquette was this. The Queen-Countess sat in her chair of state in the midst, till her shoes were taken off, and her hair dressed for the night. Right and left of her, according to their degrees, sat the other great ladies; and behind each of them, where they could find places, the maidens.
"Why are you not married?" There was, of course, no answer. "I hear that knights have fought for you; lost their lives for you." "I did not bid them," gasped Torfrida, longing that the floor would open, and swallow up the Queen-Countess and all her kin and followers, as it did for the enemies of the blessed Saint Dunstan, while he was arguing with them in an upper room at Calne.
Word Of The Day