[_Interrupting._] My kinsman has already heard it. [_To_ GUDMUND.] Will you not lay aside your cloak? GUDMUND. I thank you, Dame Margit; but it seems to me cold here—colder than I had foreseen. BENGT. For my part, I am warm enough; but then I have a hundred things to do and to take order for. [_To_ MARGIT.] Let not the time seem long to our guest while I am absent. You can talk together of the old days. [_Going._ MARGIT. [_Hesitating._] Are you going? Will you not rather—? BENGT. [_Laughing, to_ GUDMUND, _as he comes forward again._] See you well—Sir Bengt of Solhoug is the man to make the women fain of him. How short so e’er the space, my wife cannot abide to be without me. [_To_ MARGIT, _caressing her._] Content you; I shall soon be with you again. [_He goes out to the back._ MARGIT. [_To herself_.] Oh, torture, to have to endure it all. [_A short silence._ GUDMUND. How goes it, I pray, with your sister dear? MARGIT. Right well, I thank you. GUDMUND. They said she was here With you. MARGIT. She has been here ever since we— [_Breaks off._ She came, now three years since, to Solhoug with me. [_After a pause._ Ere long she’ll be here, her friend to greet. GUDMUND. Well I mind me of Signë’s nature sweet. No guile she dreamed of, no evil knew. When I call to remembrance her eyes so blue I must think of the angels in heaven. But of years there have passed no fewer than seven; In that time much may have altered. Oh, say If she, too, has changed so while I’ve been away? MARGIT. She too? Is it, pray, in the halls of kings That you learn such courtly ways, Sir Knight? To remind me thus of the change time brings— GUDMUND.