"Lord! It is not possible for you to believe that I could
love Rothgar!" Her manner of uttering that one word made it speak more scorn
than volumes might have done.
For a while he only looked at her, that strange radiance growing in his face;
but suddenly he caught her to him and kissed her so passionately that he hurt
her, and his voice was as passionate as his caress. "No," he told her over and
over. "Would I have offered you my love had I believed that? No! No!"
Satisfied, she made no more resistance but clung to him with her arms as she
had clung to him with her heart since the first hour he came into her life.
Only, when at last he released her, she took the ring from her finger and
thrust it into his hand with a little gesture of distaste. "I shall be
thankful if I do not have to see it again. It is Elfgiva's, that Canute gave
her after he had won it from Rothgar in some wager. It is her wish that you
bring it to the King again by slipping it into his broth or his wine where he
will come upon it after he has finished feeding and is therefore amiable--"
She stopped to laugh merrily in his face. "See how the very naming of the King
turns you grave again! When one gets a Marshalship, one becomes more and more
stark." Grown mischievous again in her happiness, she mocked him with
courtesies.
But it was only very faintly that he smiled at her fooling, as he held the
spiral against the light and shook it beside his ear.
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