“A devil has possession of her,” Elfgiva shrieked. “Take her out of my sight, or I shall go mad! Take her away—take her away!” Shrieking in wildest terror she fled before her, and for a moment the garden seemed given over to a grotesque game of blind-man’s buff as women and boys scattered with renewed screaming at each approach of the ghastly face. It did not stop until the two soldiers who had been made keepers of the wretched creature came running out of the house and led her away. Then it was Thorkel’s sardonic voice that brought the Lady of Northampton back to herself. “Now, is this how you take the sight of your own handiwork? Or is it because you regret that the King is not in this plight? One mouthful and no more has she had of the blood of the coiled snake.” Stopping where she was, Elfgiva gazed at him, and with a dawning comprehension came back her interrupted fury. “The coiled snake,” she repeated slowly; and after that, in a rush of words, “Then it was you who enticed her away and mistreated her? But what does it concern _you_ that I sent a snake? Where saw you it? How knew you it had blood?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned upon the Marshal, her lids contracted into narrow slits behind which her eyes raged like prisoned animals. “It is you who are to blame for this! You who miscarried my message. You have betrayed me, and I tell you—” Hysterical tears broke her voice, but she pieced it together with her temper and went on telling him all the bitter things she could think of, while he stood before her in the grim silence of one who has long foreseen the disagreeable aspects of his undertaking and made up his mind to endurance. When she stopped for breath, he said steadily, “I declare with truth that you cannot dislike what I have done much more than I, Lady of Northampton. I hope it will be an excuse with you, as it is a comfort to me, that instead of fetching you into trouble—” Thorkel took the words from his lips, and no longer with sinister deliberation but with a ferocity that showed itself in the gathering swiftness of his speech. “Trouble—yes! By the Hammer of Thor, I think you deserve to have trouble! Had any of your witches’ brew done harm to the King, I can tell you that you would not have lived much longer. What! Are the plans of men to be upset by your baby face, and a king-dom lost because a little fool chooses to play with poison as a child with fire?” “Poison?” she screamed. She had been facing him with whitening lips, and now the little breath that she had left went from her in a sharp cry. “Not poison; love-philtres! To win him back! Love-philtres,—can you not hear?” “Love-philtres!” The old warrior’s voice made the words bite with contempt. “Did the mouthful she swallowed have that effect upon your woman? Or do you think you planted love in the breasts of the dead scullions? Had you seen their writhings I think you would have called it by another name.”