ht be hers yet;
with the burning instinct of ambition she had adorned herself to the
utmost, hoping to punish her faithless lord and win the king.

She succeeded. While Athelwold stood by, biting his lips, striving to
bring back the truant blood to his face, making hesitating remarks to
his guest, and turning eyes of deadly anger on his wife, the scheming
woman was using her most engaging arts of conversation and manner to win
the king, and with a success greater than she knew. Edgar beheld her
beauty with surprise and joy, his heart throbbing with ardent passion.
She was all and more than he had been told. Athelwold had basely
deceived him, and his new-born love for the wife was mingled with a
fierce desire for revenge upon the husband. But the artful monarch
dissembled both these passions. He was, to a certain extent, in
Athelwold's power. His train was not large, and those were days in which
an angry or jealous thane would not hesitate to lift his hand against a
king. He, therefore, affected not to be struck with Elfrida's beauty,
was gracious as usual to his host, and seemed the most agreeable of
guests.

But passion was burning in his heart, the double passion of love and
revenge. A day or two of this play of kingly clemency passed, then
Athelwold and his guests went to hunt in the neighboring forest, and in
the heat of the chase Edgar gained the opportunity he desired. He
stabbed his unsuspecting host in the back, left him dead on the field,
and rode back to the castle to declare his love to the suddenly-widowed
wife.

Elfrida had won the game for which she had so heartlessly played.
Ambition in her soul outweighed such love as she bore for Athelwold, and
she received with gracious welcome the king whose hands were still red
from the murder of her late spouse. No long time passed before Edgar and
Elfrida were publicly married, and the love romance which had
distinguished the life of the famed beauty of Devonshire reached its
consummation.

This romantic story has a sequel which tells still less favorably for
the Devonshire beauty. She had compassed the murder of her husband. It
was not her last crime. Edgar died when her son Ethelred was but seven
years of age. The king had left another son, Edward, by his first wife,
now fifteen years old. The ambitious woman plotted for the elevation of
her son to the throne, hoping, doubtless, herself to reign as regent.
The people favored Edward, as the rightful heir, and