"I will show you. I was thinking how it might cause amusement to us to
ride into the City and see what the goldsmiths have in their booths. And then
I came in here and found you in need of goldsmiths' mending! Does not that
look like a sign that my thought is good?"
Elfgiva threw aside the candle to come close and lay her hands upon the girl's
breast. "Good for what?" she demanded. "Do you think it likely that I might
fall in with the King somewhere in the City?"
This was going a bit faster than Randalin had planned, and her breath came
quickly, but she took the risk and admitted it. "I did hope that it might
happen that we would see the King," she said, "and--what is more important to
us--that the King might see you."
Slowly, the King's wife went back to her seat before the mirror, and sat there
fingering and turning the jewelled rouge-pots in a deep study.
"Deliver me your opinion of this, Teboen?" she said, at last, to the big
raw-boned British woman who was her nurse and also the female majordomo of her
household.
Teboen was enough mistress of the magic art to give anything like an omen its
due weight,--and perhaps she was also human enough to be weary of a
fortnight's imprisonment with a porcupine. After becoming deliberation, she
replied that she thought rather favorably of the plan, that certainly it could
do no harm, since a visit to the booths had never been forbidden to them,
while it would be almost as sure to do good if the King could be reminded of
how beautiful a woman he was neglecting.
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