'I was detained, my lord, at Rouen to wait the king's good pleasure.'
The faces of the two earls darkened, and Roger Fitzosbern tore open the king's missive.
Scarce reading it, he flung it to De Guader with a savage oath, stamping his foot upon the ground.
'William shall rue this insult!' he hissed between his shut teeth, his face scarlet and convulsed with rage; 'and to my father's son.'
De Guader, not less moved, held the parchment with hands that so shook with anger that the dangling seals clattered against each other. His broad chest heaved, and his steel-grey eyes flashed fire as sword strikes fire on helm.
Emma, with pale cheeks and wide eyes, turned from her brother to her lover, and the East Anglian earl, exercising a huge command over himself, kept silence, and returned the letter to Roger Fitzosbern.
Hereford shook it in the air, clenching his fingers, while all the guests hung wonderingly on his actions.
Suddenly he tore the king's letter into fragments.
'Thus has William rent in sunder the ties that bound me to him!' he shouted furiously.
Osbern, Bishop of Exeter, the Earl of Hereford's uncle, who, though he had refused the sanction of his presence to the performances of Adelina, had entered the hall when the king's messenger arrived, made his way through the noble crowd that surrounded his nephew.