Sebert paid her
the tribute of a quickly drawn breath, even as he took his eyes from her to
scan the butterfly pages who ran to and fro, recovering the gilded rings.
Yellow hair and red hair and brown hair curled on their gaudy shoulders, but
no black. In all the picture there was but one figure crowned with such raven
locks as had distinguished Fridtjof the Bold, and that figure belonged to a
girl standing directly opposite by the mossy curb of the old well, which,
guarded by a circle of carefully tended trees, rose like an altar in the
centre of the inclosure. Four of the red-cloaked Danish nobles stood about
her,--and one of them wore a golden circlet upon the gold of his hair,--but
the Etheling's eyes passed them almost unheedingly to dwell upon the
black-tressed maiden.
Something about her, while it was entirely strange, was yet so absurdly
familiar. She was some very high-born lady, there could be no doubt of that,
for the delicate fabric of her trailing kirtle was flowered with gold, and
gold and coral were twined in the dusky softness of her hair and hung around
her neck in a costly chain, which the King was fingering idly as he talked
with her. Now she looked up to answer the jesting words, and the man in the
passage saw her smile and shake back her clustering curls with a gesture so
familiar... so familiar..
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