Then another, bolder still, exclaimed: It's God's truth that she is the
fairest woman in the land--perhaps no fairer has been in any land since
Helen of Troy. This I can swear to, he added, smiting the board with his
hand, because I have it from one who saw her at her home in Devon before
her marriage. One who is a better judge in such matters than I am or
than any one at this table, not excepting the king, seeing that he is
not only gifted with the serpent's wisdom but with that creature's cold
blood as well.

Edgar heard him frowningly, then ended the discussion by rising, and
silence fell on the company, for all saw that he was offended. But he
was not offended with them, since they knew nothing of his and
Athelwold's secret, and what they thought and felt about his friend was
nothing to him. But these fatal words about Elfrida's beauty had pierced
him with a sudden suspicion of his friend's treachery. And Athelwold was
the man he greatly loved--the companion of all his years since their
boyhood together. Had he betrayed him in this monstrous way--wounding
him in his tenderest part? The very thought that such a thing might be
was like a madness in him. Then he reflected--then he remembered, and
said to himself: Yes, let me follow his teaching in this matter too, as
in the other, and exercise caution and look before I leap. I shall look
and look well and see and judge for myself.

The result was that when his boon companions next met him there was no
shadow of displeasure in him; he was in a peculiarly genial mood, and so
continued. And when his friend returned he embraced him and gently
upbraided him for having kept away for so long a time. He begged him to
remember that he was his one friend and confidant who was more than a
brother to him, and that if wholly deprived of his company he would
regard himself as the loneliest man in the kingdom. Then in a short time
he spoke once more in the same strain, and said he had not yet
sufficiently honoured his friend before the world, and that he proposed
visiting him at his own castle to make the acquaintance of his wife and
spend a day with him hunting the boar in Harewood Forest.

Athelwold, secretly alarmed, made a suitable reply, expressing his
delight at the prospect of receiving the king, and begging him to give
him a couple of days' notice before making his visit, so as to give him
time to make all preparation for his entertainment.

This the king promised, and