Enid sat through long hours all alone with Geraint besides the oaken settle, propping his head and chafing his hands, but in the late afternoon she saw the huge Earl Doorm returning with his lusty spearmen and their plunder. Each hurled down a heap of spoils on the floor, threw aside his lance and doffed his helmet, while a tribe of brightly gowned gentle-women fluttered into the hall and began to talk with them. Earl Doorm struck his knife against the table and bellowed for meat, and wine. In a moment the place fairly steamed and smoked with whole roast hogs and oxen, and everybody sat down in a hodge-podge and ate like cattle feeding in their stalls, while Enid shrank far back startled, into her nook.
But suddenly, when Earl Doorm had eaten all he would, and all he could for the moment, he revolved his eyes about the bare hall and caught a glimpse of the fair little lady drooping in her niche. Then he recollected how she had crouched weeping by the roadside for her fallen lord that morning. A wild pity filled his gruff heart.
"Eat, eat!" he shouted. "I never before saw any thing so pale. Be yourself. Isn't your lord lucky, for were I dead who is there in all the world who would mourn for me? Sweet lady, never have I ever seen a lily like you. If there were a bit of color living in your cheeks there is not one among my gentle-women here who would be fit to wear your slippers for gloves. But listen to me and you will share my earldom with me, girl, and we will live like two birds in a nest and I will bring you all sorts of finery from every part of the world to make you happy."
As the earl spoke his two cheeks bulged with the two tremendous morsels of meat which he had tucked into his mouth.
Enid was more alarmed than ever.
"How can I be happy over anything," replied she, "until my lord is well again?"
The earl laughed, then plucked her up out of the corner, carried her over to the table, thrust a dish of food before her and held a horn of wine to her lips.
"By all heaven," cried Enid, "I will not drink until my lord gets up and drinks and eats with me. And if he will not rise again I will not drink any wine until I die."
At this the earl turned perfectly red and paced up and down the hall, gnawing first his upper and then his lower lip.
"Girl," shouted he, "why wail over a man who shames your beauty so, by dressing it in that rag? Put off those beggar-woman's weeds and robe yourself in this which my gentle-woman has brought you."