“The ring Canute gave Elfgiva—that he won from the giant Rothgar? Heaven forbid that I should press upon her secrets! My ears tingle yet from the cuff I got only for looking at yonder dirty scroll. Yet how long is it since you were taken into their councils, Tata? Yesterday you were no better able than I to say how things were with her.” “How long?” Randalin repeated dreamily. Her gaze had gone back again to the rain, falling so softly that every pool in the sodden paths seemed to be full of lazily winking eyes. “Oh, there are many good chances that he will be here soon now. He is seldom later than the third hour after noon.” After a bewildered gasp, Dearwyn stifled a burst of laughter in her garlands. “Oh, Tata, come to earth!” she admonished. “Come to earth!” And scooping up a handful of the fragrant bloom, she pelted the dreamer with rosy balls. Shaking them from robe and clustering hair, Randalin turned back, smiling. But her lips sobered almost to wistfulness as she sank down upon the seat beside her friend. “It seems that I must do that against my will,” she said. “Dearwyn, do you get afraid when you are happy? Sometimes, when I stand here watching for him and think how different all has happened from what I supposed, I am so happy,”—she paused, and it was as though the sun had caught the iris flowers in her eyes, until a cloud came between and the blue petals purpled darkly—“so happy that it causes fear to me, lest it be no more than a dream or in some way not true.” Her cheek, as she ended, was softly pale, but Dearwyn brushed it pink with sweeps of the long-stemmed blossom in her hand. “Sweet, it is the waxing of the moon. I pray you be blithe in your spirits. Small wonder your lover bears himself as gravely as a stone man on a tomb if you talk such—” “Dearwyn, the same thought has overtaken us both!” Randalin broke in anxiously, and now she was all awake and staying the other’s busy fingers to ensure her attention. “Not a few times it has seemed to me that he looks weary of heart, as though some struggle were sapping his strength. He swears it is not so, yet I think the rebellion of his pride against king-serving—” “If you want to know my belief, it is that he carries trouble in his breast about you,” Dearwyn interrupted. “About me?” So much hurt surprise was in Randalin’s manner that the little maid begged forgiveness with caresses of the swaying clover. “Be not vexed, honey, but in truth he is overcome by the oddest look whensoever he watches you without your seeing,—as though he were not sure of you, in some way, and yet—Oh, I cannot explain it! Only tell me this,—does he not ask you, many times and oft, if you love him, or if others love you, or such like?” In the midst of shaking her head, Randalin paused and her mouth became as round as her eyes. “Foolishly do I recall it! As if he would! And yet—Dearwyn, he has asked me four times if any Danes visit us here. Would you think that he could be—”