'By the Rood!' he exclaimed, 'thou shalt not go! Thou alone in all this castle dost refuse to believe the inevitable. I tell thee, knights of my following, whose word is sacred as my own, saw Ralph de Guader struck down by the mace of Odo of Bayeux; none could live after such a blow, were his harness sevenfold thick! Besides, the press of battle was upon the spot where he fell, and the feet of the horses must have achieved what Odo began, if his mace completed it not.' Eadgyth, who attended the countess, uttered a scream of horror, and endeavoured to stop his speech. 'Wouldst thou kill her?' she cried. Emma shook herself free from his grasp, and faced him with flashing eyes of scorn. 'By the mass, noble lady, pardon me! I would have spared thee these rude details, but perforce I must have thee comprehend.' 'If the earl indeed be perished,' said Emma bitterly, 'life will not be so sweet to me that I should take such care to save it. Save thyself and thy Bretons if thou wilt. If ye go, there will be less to man the walls, but fewer mouths to feed.' The last words were uttered with a careless contempt that was absolutely sublime, and the blustering mercenary no longer ventured to detain her. 'Certes, the donzelle is mad!' he asserted, with a round oath, when she had left the chamber, for her absolute refusal to leave Blauncheflour had thrown to the winds his plan for becoming her second husband, and becoming lord of her fair manors. Outside the chamber door Emma turned to her loving bower-maiden like a creature of the woods at bay. Eadgyth's sympathy was more dreadful to her than the Breton's brutal frankness. 'I would be alone, Eadgyth. I am going to the oratory,' she forced her white lips to murmur, and almost fled from her side down the circling stairway. Eadgyth followed at a distance, and, when Emma had disappeared within the sacred portal, threw herself prostrate at the threshold, like a faithful hound, as she had thrown herself at the door of the council-chamber in the morning. Emma, alone at last, knelt before the shrine of the Virgin. She chose that rather than the one dedicated to St. Nicholas, for it seemed to her in her anguish that her husband's patron saint had forsaken his votaries in their distress. The grief she had so long held at bay shook her from head to foot with a long quivering sob that held her speechless, and almost stopped her breath. She stretched out her arms in mute supplication to Heaven. Scalding tears formed slowly in her eyes, and rolled one by one down her bloodless cheeks. Then a fresh gust of agony shook her like a leaf. 'Ah, _Dieu merci_!' she moaned; 'the horses! the horses! They achieved if Odo failed, he said! Oh, Christ! it cannot be! That dear head that has pillowed on my bosom!' Quivering and shuddering, she sank upon the cold flags of the floor. The grey light of morning creeping through the narrow oriel found her still there. * * * * *