s,
offered to retire; but Edgar, who had no reserve in his pleasures, and
whose love to his bed-fallow was rather inflamed by enjoyment, refused
his consent, and employed force and entreaties to detain her. Elfleda
(for that was the name of the maid) trusting to her own charms, and
to the love with which, she hoped, she had now inspired the king, made
probably but a faint resistance; and the return of light discovered the
deceit to Edgar. He had passed a night so much to his satisfaction, that
he expressed no displeasure with the old lady on account of her fraud;
his love was transferred to Elfleda; she became his favorite mistress,
and maintained her ascendant over him, till his marriage with
Elfrida.[*]

[* W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 8. Higden, p. 268.]

The circumstances of his marriage with this lady were more singular
and more criminal. Elfrida was daughter and heir of Olgar, earl of
Devonshire; and though she had been educated in the country, and had
never appeared at court, she had filled all England with the reputation
of her beauty. Edgar himself, who was indifferent to no accounts of this
nature, found his curiosity excited by the frequent panegyrics which he
heard of Elfrida; and reflecting on her noble birth, he resolved, if he
found her charms answerable to their fame, to obtain possession of her
on honorable terms. He communicated his intention to Earl Athelwold, his
favorite, but used the precaution, before he made any advances to her
parents, to order that nobleman, on some pretence, to pay them a visit,
and to bring him a certain account of the beauty of their daughter.
Athelwold, when introduced to the young lady, found general report to
have fallen short of the truth; and being actuated by the most vehement
love, he determined to sacrifice to this new passion his fidelity to his
master, and to the trust reposed in him. He returned to Edgar, and told
him, that the riches alone, and high quality of Elfrida, had been the
ground of the admiration paid her, and that her charms, far from being
any wise extraordinary would have been overlooked in a woman of inferior
station. When he had, by this deceit, diverted the king from his purpose
he took an opportunity, after some interval, of turning again the
conversation on Elfrida; he remarked, that though the parentage and
fortune of the lady had not produced on him, as on others, any illusion
with regard to her beauty, he could not forbear reflecting, that s