Soon after Erlend asked:
“Will you dance with me to-night, Kristin?”
“I know not, sir,” answered the maid.
“You think, mayhap, ’tis not seemly?” he asked, and, as she did not answer, he said again: “It may well be it is not so. But I thought now maybe you might deem you would be none the worse if you took my hand in the dance to-night. But indeed ’tis eight years since I stood up to dance.”
“How may that be, sir?” asked Kristin. “Mayhap you are wedded?” But then it came into her head that had he been a wedded man, to have made tryst with her thus would have been no fair deed of him. On that she tried to mend her speech, saying: “Maybe, you have lost your betrothed maid or your wife?”
Erlend turned quickly and looked on her with strange eyes:
“Hath not Lady Aashild—? Why grew you so red when you heard who I was that evening,” he asked a little after.
Kristin flushed red once more, but did not answer; then Erlend asked again:
“I would fain know what my mother’s sister said to you of me.”
“Naught else,” said Kristin quickly, “but in your praise. She said you were so comely and so great of kin that—she said that beside such as you and her kin we were of no such great account—my folk and I—”