How was it possible that he did not feel disaster in the air?
To her it seemed that the very torch-flames hissed warnings above the
merriment, while the occasional pauses were so heavy with doom that their
weight was well-nigh unendurable; at each, she was forced to fight down a mad
impulse to scream and scatter the hush.
Then the light from the taper which a page was holding behind Norman of
Baddeby fell upon the gemmed collar that was his principal ornament, and the
sight wrought a subtle change in her mood. The collar had been her father's;
she could not look at it without seeing again his ruddy old face with its grim
mouth and faded kindly eyes. Beside this vision rose another,--the vision of
this beloved face dead in the moonlight, with Fridtjof's near it, his brave
smile frozen on his young lips. From that moment, softness and shrinking died
out in her bearing as out of her heart, and her blood was turned to fire
within her,--the liquid fire of the North. Hour after hour, she sat in rigid
waiting while the endless line of servants ran to and fro with their silver
dishes and the merriment grew and spread and the clinking came faster and
louder and the voices grew thicker and wilder.
When the wave of good-will and fellowship had reached its height, like one who
would ride in upon its crest the Gainer rose to his feet and began speaking to
the King.
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