But when, after a few months, Hereward returned from his first campaign in
Holland, covered with glory and renown, all smiles, and beauty, and
health, and good-humor, and gratitude for the magic armor which had
preserved him unhurt, then Torfrida forgot all her fears, and thought
herself the happiest maid alive for four-and-twenty hours at least.
And then came back, and after that again and again, the old fears.
Gradually she found out that the sneers which she had heard at English
barbarians were not altogether without ground.
Not only had her lover's life been passed among half-brutal and wild
adventurers; but, like the rest of his nation, he had never felt the
influence of that classic civilization without which good manners seem,
even to this day, almost beyond the reach of the white man. Those among
whom she had been brought up, whether soldiers or clerks, were probably no
nobler or purer at heart--she would gladly have believed them far less
so--than Hereward; but the merest varnish of Roman civilization had given
a charm to their manners, a wideness of range to their thoughts, which
Hereward had not.
Especially when he had taken too much to drink,--which he did, after the
Danish fashion, far oftener than the rest of Baldwin's men,--he grew rude,
boastful, quarrelsome.
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