With surprise, her glance wavered. “I did not know you knew that,” she said slowly. But, as he expected her to droop, she bristled instead. “Nor was it to be expected, Lord King, that you would be the one to blame me for using craft.”
His eyes kindled; if she had stopped there it might have gone hard with her, but she spoke on swiftly, her head indignantly erect. “If Rothgar Lodbroksson thinks he should have indemnity because he was too stupid to see through a trick, let him have Avalcomb, when you get it back from the English, and feel that he has got more than he deserves; but your anger—” she broke off abruptly and sat with her lips pressed tight as though keeping back a sob. “In the beginning, I got great kindness at your hands, Lord King,” she said at last, “and your anger—hurts me!”
On the point of softening, the King’s face hardened, and he averted his head. “You value my favor rather late in the day, Frode’s daughter. It would have been better if you had shown honor to it when you came in to me at Scoerstan, by giving me truth in return for friendship.”
If she had laughed as though recalling the jest in that scene, it is possible that he would have struck her with his glove. It was fortunate that her sense of humor was no more than a bubble on the foam of her high spirits. Her eyes were dark with earnestness as they sought his.
“Lord King, I was hindered by necessity. Your camp—was it a place for women? And did not your own mouth tell me that Randalin, Frode’s daughter, should wed the son of Lodbrok if she were alive?”
He struck his knee a ringing slap. “I confess that it is not easy to be a match for you! But I can tell you one thing which you will not be able to explain, as heretofore,—and it is a thing which has made me get bitterest against you. If you had kept your confidence from all it might have passed for discreetness, but that you should keep it from me to give it to an Englishman—”
“But I did not give it to the Englishman,” she interrupted. For an instant he stared at her; directly after he burst into a loud laugh. “Now that is the best thing that has occurred yet! Where you cannot crawl through, you break through!” He laughed again, and was opening his mouth to repeat some of the suspicions he had shared with Rothgar when something about her stopped him,—whether it was the way she bore her head or something in her deep eyes. Dropping his derision, he spoke bluntly: “What reason in the world could cause you to behave thus if it is not that he is your lover?”
The color gathered and spread over her face in maiden shame, until her tunic became the cruelest of mockeries.
“Short is the reason to tell, Lord King,” she said, “it is because I love him.” As he sat regarding her, she put out her hand and played with a tendril of wild grapevine that hung from the tree beside her, her eyes following her fingers. “I do not know why I should be ashamed of the state of my feelings. I should not be able to stand alive before you if he had not been a better lord to me than you are to English captives; and he is more gentle and high-minded than any man I ever heard sung of. Sometimes I think I should have more to be ashamed of if I did not feel love toward him.” A little defiantly, she raised her eyes to his, only to drop them back to the spray. “But he does not love me. He knows me only as the boy he was kind to. I have given him the high-seat in my heart, but I sit only within the door of his.”
The forest seemed very still when she had done,—the only sound the clanking of the bits as the horses cropped the withered grass. Then suddenly the King gathered up his lines with a jerk.