His lips gave out a flash as he nodded. “A Queen. Canute is going to give the Angles a ‘gift of the elves.’” For an instant, she was betrayed into believing him, and bent forward, her flushing face transfigured with delight. She was starting to speak when the Etheling rose abruptly from his seat. “Lord Thorkel,” he said angrily, “this cat-play would bring you little thanks from your King, nor will I longer endure it. I pray you to explain without delay that the name of ‘Elfgiva’ is borne also by Emma of Normandy.” Then the old man snarled as a wolf does whose bone has been seized. “Lord of Ivarsdale, you act in the thoughtless way of youth. I was bringing the matter gently—” But the young man accomplished his purpose in spite of the elder. He did not address the King’s wife—indeed, he refrained even from looking at her—but he spoke swiftly to the dark-haired girl who stood beside the seat. “Randalin, I beg you to tell your lady that Elfgiva Emma, who is Ethelred’s widow and the Lady of Normandy, arrives at Dover to-morrow to be made Queen of the English.” As all expected, the Lady of Northampton started up shrieking defiance, screaming that it should not be so, that the King was her husband and the soldiers would support her if the monks would not, that he was hers, hers,-and more to that effect, until the plunging words ran into each other and tears and laughter blotted out the last semblance of speech. That she would end by swooning or attacking them with her hands those who knew her best felt sure, and maids and pages crept out of her reach as hunters stand off from a wounded boar. But at the point where her voice gave out and she whirled to do one or perhaps both of these, her eyes fell on the house-door, and her expression changed from rage to amazement and from amazement to horror. Catching Randalin’s arm in fear, not anger, she began to gasp over and over the name of Teboen the nurse. Those whose glance had not followed hers, thought her mad and shrank farther; but the eyes of those who saw what she did reflected her look. In the doorway the British woman was standing, wagging her head in time to a silly quavering song that she was singing with lips so distorted as to be almost unrecognizable. Her once florid face was ashen gray, and now as she quitted the door post and came toward them she reeled in her \walk, stumbling over stones and groping blindly with her huge bony hands. But still she kept on singing, with twisted lips that strove to simper, and once she tried to sway her ungainly body into an uncouth dancing-step that brought her floundering to her knees.