"Have a care, Eldred," I said then. "You grow heedless in your anger, and go too far. I do not think that you mean this."
"Do you need to be called nidring {[12]}?" he snarled at me.
Now none heard that word pass between us, and though it made me bitterly angry I kept my wrath back. Truly I began to think that I was foolish to argue with him; but there would be grief, lifelong, at Penhurst if deadly harm befell either of us where none could say that all was fairly fought out.
"Are you not going?" he said in a choking sort of way.
"No," I said, "not until I know what all this is about."
"What good in going over that again?" he answered. "You know well enough. Let me be--you have won."
"I know," said I; "but you have not told me aught. I can only guess that you think that I have taken your place with Sexberga."
"Aye--and now you have won it."
"I want it not," I answered. "Had you not been so angry you would have known that, when I bid you go back and meet her without me."
Now he looked at me with a sort of doubt, and said, in a somewhat halting way: