“God forbid!”
“Then,” said Siward, mistaking her meaning, “all I have to tell Hereward is, it seems, that he has wasted his blow. He will return, therefore, to the Knight of St. Valeri his horse, and, if the Lady Torfrida chooses, the favor which he has taken by mistake from its rightful owner.” And he set his teeth, and could not prevent stamping on the ground, in evident passion. There was a tone, too, of deep disappointment in his voice, which made Torfrida look keenly at him. Why should Hereward’s nephew feel so deeply about that favor? And as she looked,—could that man be the youth Siward? Young he was, but surely thirty years old at least. His face could hardly be seen, hidden by helmet and nose-piece above, and mailed up to the mouth below. But his long mustache was that of a grown man; his vast breadth of shoulder, his hard hand, his sturdy limbs,—these surely belonged not to the slim youth whom she had seen from her lattice riding at Hereward’s side. And, as she looked, she saw upon his hand the bear of which her nurse had told her.
“You are deceiving me!” and she turned first deadly pale, and then crimson. “You—you are Hereward himself!”
“I? Pardon me, my lady. Ten minutes ago I should have been glad enough to have been Hereward. Now, I am thankful enough that I am only Siward; and not Hereward, who wins for himself contempt by overthrowing a knight more fortunate than he.” And he bowed, and turned away to go.
“Hereward! Hereward!” and, in her passion, she seized him by both his hands. “I know you! I know that device upon your hand. At last! at last my hero,—my idol! How I have longed for this moment! How I have toiled for it, and not in vain! Good heavens! what am I saying?” And she tried, in her turn, to escape from Hereward’s mailed arms.
“Then you do not care for that man?”
“For him? Here! take my favor, wear it before all the world, and guard it as you only can; and let them all know that Torfrida is your love.”
And with hands trembling with passion, she bound the ribbon round his helm.
“Yes! I am Hereward,” he almost shouted; “the Berserker, the brain-hewer, the land-thief, the sea-thief, the feeder of wolf and raven,—Aoi! Ere my beard was grown, I was a match for giants. How much more now, that I am a man whom ladies love? Many a champion has quailed before my very glance. How much more, now that I wear Torfrida’s gift? Aoi!”
Torfrida had often heard that wild battle-cry of Aoi! of which the early minstrels were so fond,—with which the great poet who wrote the “Song of Roland” ends every paragraph; which has now fallen (displaced by our modern Hurrah), to be merely a sailor’s call or hunter’s cry. But she shuddered as she heard it close to her ears, and saw, from the flashing eye and dilated nostril, the temper of the man on whom she had thrown herself so utterly. She laid her hand upon his lips.