“But, madam,”—and he turned shrinking from the fancied spell,—“what would you have? The—the corpse? It is in the keeping of—of another lady.”
“So?” said Torfrida, quietly. “Leave her to me”; and she swept past them all, and flung open the bower door at their backs, discovering Alftruda sitting by the dead.
The ruffians were so utterly appalled, not only by the false powers of magic, but by veritable powers of majesty and eloquence, that they let her do what she would.
“Out!” cried she, using a short and terrible epithet. “Out, siren, with fairy’s face and tail of fiend, and leave the husband with his wife!”
Alftruda looked up, shrieked; and then, with the sudden passion of a weak nature, drew a little knife, and sprang up.
Ivo made a coarse jest. The Abbot sprang in: “For the sake of all holy things, let there be no more murder here!”
Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake’s eye upon her wretched rival.
“Out! woman, and choose thee a new husband among these French gallants, ere I blast thee from head to foot with the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian.”
Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room.
“Now, knights, give me—that which hangs outside.”