She was alone in one of the bare mouldering rooms, leaning against the deep-set small-paned window which had become her accustomed post. It offered no pleasanter outlook than the snow-powdered thicket beyond the wall and a glimpse of the Thames, spreading silently over the surrounding marshes; but from it her fancy’s eye could follow the mighty stream around its eastern bend to the point where the City walls began, and Saint Paul’s shingled steeple reared itself in lofty pride. The Palace stood in the shade of that steeple,—the real Palace, where the King sat deciding over the fate of his new subjects, taking their lands from them, when he did not take their lives, and banishing them across the sea to live and die in beggary. Her fingers tapped the glass in desperation as she realized her helplessness even to get news of his judgments. “The King will never come to this rubbish heap,” she told herself despairingly. “Here we are buried no less than if we lay in a mound. It is not likely that we shall get news by an easier way than by going to him.” Straining her eyes out over the mist-robed river, she tried for the thousandth time to think of some bait alluring enough to tempt Elfgiva to that point of daring. Hope the Lady of Northampton had every morning when she awoke and looked in her mirror, and Wrath lay down with her every night, but the rashness which had prompted her first attempt, Thorkel must have taken away with him, a trophy tied to his saddle-bow. She made big plans and she talked big words,—but always she put off their fulfilment until the morrow. “At this gait, he could be dead and in his grave without my knowing it!” Randalin cried in despair, and her voice made it quite clear that “he” no longer meant the King. Since there was no one to see it, she even allowed her head to fall forward on her arms, and let the ache in her throat ease itself in a little sob. “Now it is open to me that I was foolish to let what happened in the garden, that day, cause so much sadness in my heart,” she sighed. “It should have been a great joy to me that he was still safe and happy... and I should have found some hope in it, also, for as long as he is in England there would always be the chance that I might see him again... And perhaps, after a long while, when he had quite forgotten how I looked as Fridtjof... if I should be able to learn many graceful woman’s ways from Elfgiva... and if he should come upon me when I had on a very beautiful kirtle... so long as he likes my hair...”