“Here, lady. What is your need?”
To place the speaker Elfgiva raised her head slightly, laughing as she let it sink back. “Watching for him already, and the sun but little past noon? For shame, moppet! Come here.”
“So please you, I was watching the rain on the roses,” Randalin excused herself with a blush as she came forward.
A merry chorus mocked her: “Is it to watch the roses that you have put on the gown which matches your eyes, you sly one?”... “And the lilies in your hair, sweet? Is it to shelter them from the rain that you wear them?”... “Fie, Tata! Can you not fib yet without changing color?”
But Elfgiva raised an impatient hand. “Peace, chatterers!” she commanded; and drawing the girl to her, she spoke low and earnestly in her ear.
Randalin looked up in surprise. “You will not see him, lady? Not though he bring news of the doings in the Palace?”
“Heaven’s mercy!” Elfgiva shrugged with a touch of scorn. “What abundance of news he has found to bring since the day he fell in with you at even-song!” Then she consented to smile faintly as she settled her head among the cushions. “I would rather sleep, child. Comfort him as best you can,—only not so well that you forget that which I enjoined you. If he fail us, I cannot tell what we shall do,—now that the second scullion has been so foolish as to get himself killed in some way. Where bear you the ring?”
The girl touched the spot where the gold chain that encircled her neck crept into the breast of her gown. The lady shook her head.
“Never would you think of it again. Take it out and wear it on your finger.”
As she obeyed, Randalin laughed a little, for the ring was a man’s ring, a massive spiral whose two ends were finished with serpents’ heads, and her thickest finger was but a loose fit in its girth. But Elfgiva, when she had seen it on, closed her eyes with an air of satisfaction.