"Lady Walden, will you not give us a reading from your play?"
"O, yes, do!" cried Beatrice, impulsively.
Lorelie hesitated. The drama written by her had been a work of time and patience: it was as near perfection as she would ever be able to bring it: she had poured her noblest feelings into the work. But she knew that what seems good to the author often seems bad to the critic: that the thoughts, supposed to be original, prove to be merely echoes of what others have said before in far better language: that the line that separates eloquence from bombast is easily passable on the wrong side.
These were the motives disposing Lorelie to keep her tragedy to herself. The person who should have been the first to give encouragement on this occasion was mute; for Ivar maintained an air of indifference.
"Deserves kicking," was Idris' secret comment, as he became conscious of a suggestion of humiliation in Lorelie's manner, due to her husband's want of appreciation. "And," he added to himself, "I should very much like to do the kicking."
Moved at last by the solicitations of her two visitors Lorelie produced the manuscript of her play and prepared to read some portions of it.
"This drama of mine, 'The Fatal Skull'," she began, "derives its name from the central incident in it—an incident of early Italian history. Alboin, King of the Lombards, had become enamoured of Rosamond, the beautiful daughter of Cunimund, King of the Gepids. Both father and daughter, however, rejected the suit, for Lombards and Gepids had long been at feud. Embassies having failed, Alboin resolved to attain his object by force, and, accordingly, entered the territories of Cunimund with an army. In the battle that followed, the Gepid king was slain, his forces put to the rout, and his daughter Rosamond became the prize and the reluctant bride of the conqueror Alboin."
"How dreadful," murmured Beatrice, "to be compelled to marry the man who had slain her father!"
"The sequel is more dreadful," returned Lorelie. "The death of Cunimund was not sufficient to satiate the hatred of Alboin; the skull of the fallen king, fashioned into a drinking cup, became the most treasured ornament of his sideboard.
"Feasting one day with his companions-in-arms, Alboin called for the skull of Cunimund. 'The cup of victory'—to quote the words of Gibbon—'was accepted with horrid applause by the circle of the Lombard chiefs. "Fill it again with wine," exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, "fill it to the brim; carry this goblet to the queen, and request in my name that she would rejoice with her father." In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamond had strength to utter, "Let the will of my lord be obeyed," and, touching it with her lips, pronounced a silent imprecation that the insult should be washed away in the blood of Alboin.'"