An instant he stood abashed before it, so did it jar upon the stately harmony; then the grim scene that had brought him to that condition came back and dwarfed everything else. With a gesture of passionate scorn, he turned from the mirror.
“Jarl’s sister, if ever it happen to you to reach the sap of the Tree of Life, such things as clothes will seem less important than cobwebs blowing from its branches!” he said, and whirling on his heel, he turned and stood in the door, staring away with unseeing eyes.
Yrsa the Lovely, fastening a velvet pouch to her mistress’s girdle of filigree, let it fall with a soft thud; but that was all the sound there was in the room until the Jarl’s sister began to speak coldly to the other maids:
“I want to wear the silver neck-chain—No, not that one—the one to match this girdle. Yes, that. And, Nanna, I wish you would bring me the kerchiefs,—all that have a silver fringe.” As light footsteps answered her, and the rustle of silk, she gave other low-voiced orders.
Gradually, the calm routine brought the Songsmith back into touch with the world about him. Staring away over the whirring wheels, he told himself that it must look to her as though he had come unsobered from a night’s carousal,—that it was even better she should think so than guess the true reason for his dulled wits. Girding up his patience for this new trial, he turned back wearily.
“It is fair and right, Jarl’s sister, that I should have blame for showing you aught but the bright side of my manners, which are tarnished enough at best. I will take my leave now, and come back only when the wine-clouds have cleared from my mind.” He was crossing the threshold when her outstretched hand stayed him.
“I would rather you would remain, if you have nothing against it,” she said, then spoke over her shoulder to the kneeling tirewomen, who were making the arrangement of her train an excuse for lingering. “Maidens, you have done enough work on those folds. Go out now to your spinning,—excepting only Yrsa. Foster-sister, do you take your quill embroidery to that stool under the window, yonder.”
When she had seen them obey her, she turned back to her lover a face whose expression he could not understand.
“I will begin by saying outright that you need not try to hide the truth under the pretence that it is wine instead of trouble which ails you. I should know better than that even if Thorgrim’s son had not taken pains to let me hear how you were likely to pass the night.”
In his mind he repeated the name of Thorgrim’s son, at first wonderingly, then vengefully; but aloud he said nothing, only continued to look at her in haggard suspense.