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"What of that, O Prince?" said the Italian. "Who more beautiful if report be true than those lost women who dance nightly in the forests with Venus and Herodias, as it may be this Torfrida has done many a time?" "You priests are apt to be hard upon poor women."

Would that I could hear you singing thus in William's hall." "No more of that, Sir Abbot. The only music which I have for William is the music of steel on steel." Hereward answered sharply, because he was half of Thorold's mind. "Now," said Torfrida, as it grew late, "we must ask our noble guest for what he can give us as easily and well as he can song, and that is news.

Alftruda, too, was mightily displeased, as she seemed one whom Hereward thought the most beautiful he had ever beheld; indeed, for one moment he even forgot Torfrida, and gazed at her spellbound.

When my love cried for hunger and cold, I took it back again to my own bosom: and whether it has lived or died there, is no one's matter but my own." "Hunger and cold? I hear that him to whom you gave your love you drove out to the cold, bidding him go fight in his bare shirt, if he wished to win your love." "I did not. He angered me he " and Torfrida found herself in the act of accusing Hereward.

"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.

Only Hereward and Torfrida saw it all, looking back on the splendid past, the splendid hopes for the future: glory, honor, an earldom, a free Danish England, and this was all that was left! "No it is not!" cried Torfrida suddenly, as if answering her own unspoken thoughts, and his. "Love is still left. The gallows and the stake cannot take that away."

He bowed assent. She took him by the hands, and, after the fashion of those days, kissed him on the small space on either cheek, which was left bare between the nose-piece and the chain-mail. "You are welcome. Hereward is is alive?" "Alive and gay, and all the more gay at being able to send to the Lady Torfrida by me something which was once hers, and now is hers once more."

Omer; but he was Robert's man, and his good friend likewise; and to the wars he must go forth once more; and for eight or nine weary months Torfrida was alone: but very happy, for a certain reason of her own.

And thus Torfrida whether from woman's sentiment of pity, or from a woman's instinctive abhorrence of villany and wrong, had become there and then an Englishwoman of the English, as she proved by strange deeds and sufferings for many a year. "Where is that Norseman, Martin?" asked Hereward that night ere he went to bed, "I want to hear more of poor Hardraade." "You can't speak to him now, master.

"Never, never," shrieked Torfrida, "never to these horrid vaults. I will die in the fresh air! I will be buried under the green hollies; and the nightingales as they wander up from my own Provence, shall build and sing over my grave. Never, never!" murmured she to herself all the more eagerly, because something within her said that it would come to pass.