While he kept a firm hold upon the spear which he had dropped like a gilded bar across the door, the English sentinel repeated for the tenth time his respectful denial: “I will take it upon me to admit you to the gallery, noble lady; but you were the Queen herself, I dare not let you in to the lower part. There be none but men with the King, and it is not fitting—” “And is the son of a Saxon serf to decide where it is fitting for me to go?” the Lady of Northampton demanded, facing him in a tempest of angry beauty. “Whatsoever you shall do by my direction, dog, will in all respects be available to your credit. Let me through to my husband, or I can tell you that you will find your wariness terribly misplaced!” The guard discreetly held his tongue,—but he likewise held his position. Elfgiva’s bosom was beginning to heave in hysterical menace when a second soldier, lounging against the wall behind the first, ventured a soothing word. “For your own safety, noble one, ask it not. The King is listening to a quarrel between an Englishman and a Dane; and by reason of it, there are many in the room whose tempers may—” Randalin, who alone of all the maidens had remained undauntedly at her mistress’ elbow, caught that elbow in a vice-like grip. “Take the gallery, then, lady!” she urged in a piercing whisper. “The gallery, as quick as you can.” As an angry cat wounds whoever is nearest, Elfgiva scratched her in the same undertone. “Stupid! Do you imagine that the only Englishman who has part in the world is the one you showed yourself a fool for? Do you not understand that if I let them assign me to some dark gallery, Canute will not be able to see me?” It did not appear that the girl so much as felt the claws. Her eyes had a look of strained listening as they gazed past the sentinel and across the ante-room to the great curtained doorway. “He will succeed better in seeing you through a dim light than through a stone wall,” she returned. Biting her lips, the fair Tyrant of Northampton measured the man through her lashes. He might have been of the same material as his spear for all the sign he showed of yielding. She could not understand such defiance, and, like mysteries in general, it awed even while it angered her. Affecting to draw herself up in disdain, she really gave back a step. “Perhaps it would be wise to put off our visit until a day that there is a man at the door instead of a blockhead—” Randalin’s arm was an iron barrier behind her. “Now I do not know where you think the power to do that will come from!” she hissed in her ear. “Do you not see that if you go back to your grooms and let them know that you have not got enough honor with the King to gain an entrance, they will never dare do your bidding again? Do you not see that you must do one of two things, or now win, or now lose?”