Olvir half frowned, and drew a little apart, as he recalled his encounter in the wild beech forest.
"What are your tidings?" he insisted.
The girl glanced up at him with a look which, though of but a moment's duration, brought out with startling distinctness her resemblance to the grisly old forest count. Then her scarlet lips parted in a smile that showed her strong white teeth, and she replied slowly: "I bend to the bidding of my lord. Know, then, that our lord king desires the company of his daughter on his southward war-faring, and, that the princess may not be lonely, he has asked the queen to choose her a journey-mate from among the bower-maidens."
"The king takes the little vala on such a war-faring! and you, of all the queen's maidens, are chosen to go-- By Loki, there are tales of Pepin's son! Were I sure-- Ah! that boding of the witch,--her own mother!"
"You speak in riddles," said Fastrada, sharply. "What of my mother's boding?"
"No good word to you and me," replied Olvir; and he told briefly of the meeting with the old count and his witch wife. As he spoke, his scorn of spells and evil bodings came back to him, and he cast off the doubt which had fallen upon his heart. But when, smiling at his foolish fear and jealousy, he glanced down at the maiden, he caught a glimpse of her eyes, green and narrow-lidded as her father's. They were still green when the girl met his look full-faced, and asked in a sibilant voice: "You are sure--my mother--she said a king--one grey of eye?"
"And I am neither!" muttered Olvir. "Yet were she twice your mother, I 'd laugh at such witchery."
But Fastrada turned from her lover's smiling look. She paused, and gazed down at the weed-grown ash-heap at her feet, her eyes again narrowed to a line.
A sudden chill fell upon Olvir. If the maiden truly loved him, why should she stand pondering that wild foretelling? Half angered, he glanced away, and his eye was caught by a glinting in the grass. He went ahead, and found the missing brooch.
"Here is your clasp, daughter of Rudulf," he said coldly.