laughed a little, for the ring was a man's ring,
a massive spiral whose two ends were finished with serpents' heads, and
her thickest finger was but a loose fit in its girth. But Elfgiva, when
she had seen it on, closed her eyes with an air of satisfaction.

"To keep from losing it, will keep it in your mind," she said. "Now
leave me. Candida,--more softly! And see to it that you do not stop
the moment my eyes are closing. Leonorine, why are you industrious in
singing only when it is not required of you?... That is better... Let no
one wake me."

They drew silence around her like a curtain through whose silken web the
blended voices of rain and lyre and singer crept in soothing melody. To
escape its ensnaring folds, Randalin stole back to the distant window
beneath which Dearwyn sat on a little bench, weaving clover blossoms
into a chain.

The little gentlewoman looked up with her soft pretty smile. "How
mysterious you are, you two!" she whispered, as she swept the mass of
rosy bloom to the floor to make room for her friend. "What with Teboen
always seething ill-smelling herbs and--Tata, I pray you to tell who has
gifted you with such a monster?"

Waving the ring where the light might catch the serpents' eyes, Randalin
pursed her lips with so much mystery that her friend was tempted to
catch the hand and hold it prisoner while she examined the ornament.
After one look, however, she let it fall with an expression of awe upon
her dimpled face.

"The ring Canute gave Elfgiva--that he won from the giant Rothgar?
Heaven forbid that I should press upon her secrets! My ears tingle yet
from the cuff I got only for looking at yonder dirty scroll. Yet how
long is it since you were taken into their councils, Tata? Yesterday you
were no better able than I to say how things were with her."

"How long?" Randalin repeated dreamily. Her gaze had gone back again to
the rain, falling so softly that every pool in the sodden paths seemed
to be full of lazily winking eyes. "Oh, there are many good chances that
he will be here soon now. He is seldom later than the third hour after
noon."

After a bewildered gasp, Dearwyn stifled a burst of laughter in her
garlands. "Oh, Tata, come to earth!" she admonished. "Come to earth!"
And scooping up a handful of the fragrant bloom, she pelted the dreamer
with rosy balls.

Shaking them from robe and clustering hair, Randalin turned back,
smiling. But her lips sobered almost to wistfulness as