Unconsciously, Sigurd’s glance must have followed him, for when it came back to the girl, she had answered the question in his mind. The blue hood was thrown back, and the moon shone on a small fair head, upborne with brave dignity, even while the lovely eyes and lips were tremulous.
“Astrid!” he breathed.
She returned his look with the grave steadiness that was a little pathetic in so young a girl.
“For the second time I have lowered the point of my pride to you,” she said. “Are you going to make me sorry this time also?”
He began to speak eagerly. It seemed that he would have caught her hands if he had dared.
“Astrid, I was not to blame! I beg you not to believe that I would slight a token from you who have always sat highest in my heart. The churl you gave your rune-ring to—he must have mislaid it, and then feared to give it to me when he found it afterwards. Not until this Spring, when he died and his relation came upon it among his things and brought it to me, did I know that you had sent me a message of love after your father refused to bargain with me. Because I was not in the king’s service, Gudbrand was even disrespectful in his treatment of me. And the next month, I heard that you had married Hall. And I had had no farewell from you. What could I think but that you had held me lightly, and lightly let me go? What else could I think?”
“You could have remembered that I was helpless,” Astrid answered slowly. “Could I wed you against my father’s will? Could I hold back from marrying Hall, though he was in everything what I detested most?”
She steadied her lip in her little white teeth.
“You could have believed in me,” she said, “as I would have believed in you. Three seasons we had spoken and feasted and ridden together, and when had you ever found me changeable toward my friends, or greedy after gold? You could have believed in me.”
“I ought to have believed,” Sigurd said humbly.