“He must!” answered Tostig, “and, despite all our breaches, with soft message he will. For Harold has the heart of the Saxon, to which the sons of one father are dear; and Githa, my mother, when we first fled, controlled the voice of my revenge, and bade me wait patient and hope yet.”
Scarce had these words fallen from Tostig’s lips, when the chief of his Danish house-carles came in, and announced the arrival of a bode from England.
“His news? his news?” cried the Earl, “with his own lips let him speak his news.”
The house-carle withdrew but to usher in the messenger, an Anglo-Dane.
“The weight on thy brow shows the load on thy heart,” cried Tostig. “Speak, and be brief.”
“Edward is dead.”
“Ha? and who reigns?”
“Thy brother is chosen and crowned.”
The face of the Earl grew red and pale in a breath, and successive emotions of envy and old rivalship, humbled pride and fierce discontent, passed across his turbulent heart. But these died away as the predominant thought of self-interest, and somewhat of that admiration for success which often seems like magnanimity in grasping minds, and something too of haughty exultation, that he stood a King’s brother in the halls of his exile, came to chase away the more hostile and menacing feelings. Then Judith approached with joy on her brow, and said:
“We shall no more eat the bread of dependence even at the hand of a father; and since Harold hath no dame to proclaim to the Church, and to place on the dais, thy wife, O my Tostig, will have state in far England little less than her sister in Rouen.”