“Ragnar is my cousin,” she said, “or a good brother to me, if you will. Moreover, until the other day when he met me in London by some good fortune, I had hardly seen him since my father died.”
“What think you of Griffin?”
“Nothing at all, for nidring he is,” answered Goldberga with curling lip.
Now that angered Alsi, for he had so much to do with that business; and if Griffin was to be called thus by his fault, he was likely to lose a friend.
“I would have you remember,” he said, “that in all this choosing it remains for me to give consent or withhold it.”
“I shall only ask your consent to my wedding such a man as I have told you of, uncle—a king or a king’s son.”
“So,” said Alsi, “you would choose first, and ask me afterwards, forsooth! That is not the way that things are to be between us. It is for me to choose, and that according to the oath which I took when your father made me guardian of you and his realm.”
“Yet,” said Goldberga very gently, “I think that my father would not have meant that I should be the only one not to be asked.”
“I can only go by what I swore, and that I will carry out. I promised to see you married to the most goodly and mightiest man in the land.”
“That can be none but a king, as I think.”