She, pondering dazedly, thought that a thunderstorm had broken.
But the sun was shining as it had shone all day: the little stream which bounded the orchard from the meadows beyond was as blue as the sky whose colour it borrowed. The earth beneath her feet seemed to pant forth the scent, sweet and languorous, of white wild violets. A cuckoo shouted insistently. The air was vibrant with the voices of created things. A glimmering sulphur-moth came fluttering before her. Ethelfrith began to run. About and about she chased it, screaming in her excitement; and presently she fell on her knees, panting, by the brookside, her arms clasped around a clump of meadowsweet and forget-me-not.
Summer was summer once again.
They were all upon a green knoll, sheltered by ash and elm. They had flown their hawks with some success, and were now enjoying shade and repose, while their attendants laid the midday meal before them.
Ethelfrith looked often at Ethelbert. He was listening somewhat impatiently to Eadburh, whose florid beauty was evidently little to his taste.
"Lord King," she was saying, "ye seem to me in no wise a monkish man. I thought, from what I had heard, that surely ye would betake you to the life of the cloister, or else bind yourself to all of a saint's life in your kingly halls. I beseech you say, had ye ever such a meaning?"
"They were my youthful thoughts," said Ethelbert. "But I have put them far from me. A king's life is for a king, and no monk's life. Besides, I am the last of my father's house."
He rose, and crossed to Ethelfrith, offering to pour mead into her drinking-horn.
Now Cynerith had looked often and long at Ethelbert since his coming.
"A harmless boy!" she remarked to her daughter Eadburh; and then she said "Fore heaven! the handsomest boy I have seen this many a year!"