“Her tears are not at her command, nor her smiles,”
said the Vala, solemnly; “her tears flow from
the fount of thy sorrows, and her smiles are the beams
from thy joys. For know, O Harold! that Edith
is thine earthly Fylgia; thy fate and her fate are
as one. And vainly as man would escape from
his shadow, would soul wrench itself from the soul
that Skulda hath linked to his doom.”
Harold made no reply; but his step, habitually slow,
grew more quick and light, and this time his reason
found no fault with the oracles of the Vala.
As Hilda entered the hall, the various idlers accustomed
to feed at her cost were about retiring, some to their
homes in the vicinity, some, appertaining to the household,
to the dormitories in the old Roman villa.
It was not the habit of the Saxon noble, as it was
of the Norman, to put hospitality to profit, by regarding
his guests in the light of armed retainers.
Liberal as the Briton, the cheer of the board and
the shelter of the roof were afforded with a hand equally
unselfish and indiscriminate; and the doors of the
more wealthy and munificent might be almost literally
said to stand open from morn to eve.
As Harold followed the Vala across the vast atrium,
his face was recognised, and a shout of enthusiastic
welcome greeted the popular Earl. The only voices
that did not swell that cry, were those of three monks
from a neighbouring convent, who choose to wink at
the supposed practices of the Morthwyrtha [97], from
the affection they bore to her ale and mead, and the
gratitude they felt for her ample gifts to their convent.
“One of the wicked House, brother,” whispered
the monk.
“Yea; mockers and scorners are Godwin and his
lewd sons,” answered the monk.
And all three sighed and scowled, as the door closed
on the hostess and her stately guest.
Two tall and not ungraceful lamps lighted the same
chamber in which Hilda was first presented to the
reader. The handmaids were still at their spindles,
and the white web nimbly shot as the mistress entered.
She paused, and her brow knit, as she eyed the work.
“But three parts done?” she said, “weave
fast, and weave strong.”
Harold, not heeding the maids or their task, gazed
inquiringly round, and from a nook near the window,
Edith sprang forward with a joyous cry, and a face
all glowing with delight—sprang forward,
as if to the arms of a brother; but, within a step
or so of that noble guest, she stopped short, and
her eyes fell to the ground.
Harold held his breath in admiring silence.
The child he had loved from her cradle stood before
him as a woman. Even since we last saw her,
in the interval between the spring and the autumn,
the year had ripened the youth of the maiden, as it
had mellowed the fruits of the earth; and her cheek
was rosy with the celestial blush, and her form rounded
to the nameless grace, which say that infancy is no
more.
