castle of mine.'

'Eadgyth and I were quarrelling,' said Emma gaily, 'because we were so lonely in thine absence, and could find nothing better to do.'

'By the mass! that won't serve thee for an excuse, Emma,' answered the earl; then, taking her hands and looking searchingly in her face, he said somewhat sternly, as if to compel an answer, 'Art thou fretting at the breaking of thy troth with Ralph de Guader?'

Emma turned away blushing from his scrutiny.

'The wound is fresh yet, Roger!' she said. 'It will bleed. Time will perchance heal it.'

'And by all the saints! a very short time too!' said Hereford triumphantly. 'Thou shalt plight a new troth to-night.'

Emma started with apprehension. In those days, damsels of rank were often disposed of in marriage by their male relatives with very little regard to their prejudices or affections, a girl's whimsies appearing of small consequence in their eyes beside the importance of a good political alliance, and Emma feared lest her brother might intend to demand a summary transference of her affections. Hitherto, it was true that the young earl had been tender and indulgent, and had regarded her wishes the more readily perhaps in this matter, that Ralph de Guader, the powerful Earl of East Anglia, was the very man of all others to suit his views of a desirable brother-in-law. But Emma knew him to be both impulsive and obstinate, and visions of a fierce struggle with him, ending in the cloister, the haven of refuge for women in those days, passed through her mind.

The earl, however, took no notice of her trepidation. 'Come,' he said, and led the way down the wide stone staircase. Emma followed trembling, and wondering what ordeal was before her. They entered a small room set apart near the great banqueting-hall, which was the earl's special sanctum.

The next moment she found herself with her two hands clasped in those of Ralph de Guader, while he was looking down at her with a hunger of entreaty in his eyes; and in the minds of both was the unspoken thought, that if all had gone well they would have been husband and wife that day.

The revulsion from apprehension to joy was so great as to be almost a pain.

'Is it thou indeed, Ralph?' she faltered; and the young Earl of Hereford laughed.

'Didst think I had brought home an ogre to be my beau-frère,' he asked, 'that thou wast so sore afraid?'

Emma turned anxiously to De Guader.

'The king, then, has relented?' she said quickly. 'In sooth, I doubted not his heart would soften. He could not be so cruel as to part us!'

De Guader shot a questioning glance at Hereford.

'Plead thine own cause, valiant knight!' said Roger a little sarcastically. 'I was never a maker of speeches, and, by the Holy Virgin! thy eloquence has twisted me round thy little finger. See if thou canst vie with a woman's sharp wits. To say truth, I care not to breathe thy plan to the vagrant air, it has such a treasonable savour.'

Emma looked from one to the other for a solution of the mystery, but she did not see much in De Guader's dark, handsome face to help her to read riddles.

'Thy brother bids me proffer my own petition, dear lady,' he said. 'If I hesitate, be merciful to my unreadiness, for it is no easy boon I come to ask of thee.'

He led her to a carved settle which stood beside the fireplace, and when she was seated, he stood before her silently a moment or two, the firelight scintillating on the rings of the mail in which he was sheathed from head to foot, and sparkling on the jewels of his baldric and the golden hilt of his great two-handed sword, for, like her brother, he was still in his harness.

'Noble Emma, I have come to ask thee to share with me danger and difficulty,' he said. 'The king has not relented. But his mandate is unjust, and I beg thee to disregard it, and to give me once more the sweet promise that thou wilt be my bride.'

'Dost thou mean that thou wouldst ask me to defy the king?' faltered Emma, a great terror chasing away the short-lived joy which had flooded her heart. She turned wide, anxious eyes upon her brother.

'Dost thou not see, Emma, we are sick of spending our lives for William, and getting nothing but kicks and curses from him?' explained the prosaic Roger. 'By the mass! it is hard on Ralph and on me, after so much faithful service, and so maint hard blows given and taken in William's business, that he should mar all our plans and spoil all our pleasure by putting his veto on your marriage. A curse on loyalty! If this is all it brings, we may as well be a little disloyal.'

Roger had better have allowed his friend to plead his own cause as he had bidden him to do. Ralph's appeal to Emma to share danger with him had touched her generous spirit. Her brother's outburst against his sovereign roused all her loyalty.

'I know not what to reply to such converse,' said Emma indignantly; then added, between jest and earnest, the tears trembling on her lashes as she looked at her brother, 'I would fain let it pass as a bad joke, or to think that perchance ye twain have been drinking a little copiously at the wine-cup.'

'Nay, Emma, that is an injustice!' cried Hereford, bursting into laughter, and clapping his hand down upon De Guader's mailed shoulder; 'when this poor love-lorn galliard would not break fast till he had seen thee, albeit he had been in selle all day, so fire-hot was he to mend his broken troth.'

'It may well seem strange converse to the gentle damsel,' said Ralph gravely. 'The earl your father almost worshipped William of Normandy, who, in good sooth, would never have been King of England but for his stalwart aid, and she has never heard whisper of aught against the king. We who have writhed under his imperious tyranny, and groaned in spirit so fiercely,'—here the level brows were knitted and the entreating face grew stern, while the green light shone in the deep-set eyes,—'can scarce conceive the shock she feels at our sudden speech.'

'She will have to get used to it,' said Earl Roger dryly, 'for my patience is at an end. Beshrew me! she will hear a good deal of such talk. William has ever popped upon me like a cat on a mouse whenever any scheme which promised me well was in hand. And what has he given me but ravaged land that the Welsh run over and harry at will? I say he only gives away what he must needs pay a garrison to defend if he kept it himself. What is your earldom of Norwich, Ralph, but sea-washed dunes or waste corn lands? He is ever nibbling at our power. Earls, indeed! Poor earls are we beside Godwin, Leofric, and Siward! But I tell thee he has gone too far this time. I'll not be thwarted in my plan to be thy brother-in-law; no, neither by king-lord or foolish damsel!' He turned to Emma somewhat fiercely. 'Hark ye, sister of mine, by the little finger of St. Nicholas, to whom De Guader has dedicated his castle of Blauncheflour, thou hadst better make no mincing about accepting a man thou hast already pleaded guilty to loving, or I shall have a crow to pluck with thee!'

'Nay, nay!' exclaimed the courteous De Guader, smiling affectionately at the bewildered and somewhat frightened Emma, and not a little pleased by this crude revelation of his lady's favour. 'Thy noble sister must take me of her own free will or not at all. Holy Virgin! her will is my law.'

Emma raised her head with a proud and splendid gesture.

'Ay,' she cried, 'Sir Earl of Norwich! I will have neither thee nor any man else but of my own free will! Did they stretch me on the rack, or persuade me ever so by such-like loving persuasions, I would have none I did not choose!'

The two earls laughed.

'Well crowed, fair hen!' cried her brother, and Ralph regarded her with admiring eyes.

'There spoke the true daughter of William Fitzosbern, eh, Roger?' he exclaimed. 'Methinks if the Lady Emma had felt the Conqueror's heel as heavy as we, her blood would boil as easily. But in sooth, dear lady, the minstrels and romaunt writers fill damsels'