What I have
had will still be mine, when that which I have shall fail me."
"And you would buy short joy with lasting woe?"
"That would I, like a brave man's child. I say,--the present is mine, and
I will enjoy it, as greedily as a child. Let the morrow take thought for
the things of itself.--Countess, your bath is ready."
Nineteen years after, when the great conqueror lay, tossing with agony and
remorse, upon his dying bed, haunted by the ghosts of his victims, the
clerks of St. Saviour's in Bruges city were putting up a leaden tablet
(which remains, they say, unto this very day) to the memory of one whose
gentle soul had gently passed away. "Charitable to the poor, kind and
agreeable to her attendants, courteous to strangers, and only severe to
herself," Gunhilda had lingered on in a world of war and crime; and had
gone, it may be, to meet Torfrida beyond the grave, and there finish their
doubtful argument.
The Countess was served with food in Torfrida's chamber. Hereward and his
wife refused to sit, and waited on her standing.
"I wish to show these saucy Flemings," said he, "that an English princess
is a princess still in the eyes of one more nobly born than any of them."
But after she had eaten, she made Torfrida sit before her on the bed, and
Hereward likewise; and began to talk; eagerly, as one who had not
unburdened her mind for many weeks; and eloquently too, as became
Sprakaleg's daughter and Godwin's wife.
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