“Oh, tempt not! Oh, delude not!” cried Edith, while the blood rushed over her brow. “Thou knowest this can not be. Another’s! he is another’s! and in the words thou hast uttered there is deadly sin.”
“There is no sin in the resolves of a fate that rules us in spite of ourselves. Tarry only till the year bring round the birth-day of Harold; for my sayings shall be ripe with the grape, and when the feet of the vineherd are red in the Month of the Vine [221], the Nornas shall knit ye together again!”
Edith clasped her hands mutely, and looked hard into the face of Hilda,—looked and shuddered she knew not why.
The boat landed on the eastern shore of the river, beyond the walls of the city, and then Edith bent her way to the holy walls of Waltham. The frost was sharp in the glitter of the unwarming sun; upon leafless boughs hung the barbed ice-gems; and the crown was on the brows of Harold! and at night, within the walls of the convent, Edith heard the hymns of the kneeling monks; and the blasts howled, and the storm arose, and the voices of destroying hurricanes were blent with the swell of the choral hymns.
CHAPTER IV.
Tostig sate in the halls of Bruges, and with him sate Judith, his haughty wife. The Earl and his Countess were playing at chess, (or the game resembling it, which amused the idlesse of that age,) and the Countess had put her lord’s game into mortal disorder, when Tostig swept his hand over the board, and the pieces rolled on the floor.
“That is one way to prevent defeat,” said Judith, with a half smile and half frown.
“It is the way of the bold and the wise, wife mine,” answered Tostig, rising, “let all be destruction where thou thyself canst win not! Peace to these trifles! I cannot keep my mind to the mock fight; it flies to the real. Our last news sours the taste of the wine, and steals the sleep from my couch. It says that Edward cannot live through the winter, and that all men bruit abroad, there can be no king save Harold my brother.”
“And will thy brother as King give to thee again thy domain as Earl?”