"Leave her to me"; and she swept past them
all, and flung open the bower door at their backs, discovering Alftruda
sitting by the dead.
The ruffians were so utterly appalled, not only by the false powers of
magic, but by veritable powers of majesty and eloquence, that they let her
do what she would.
"Out!" cried she, using a short and terrible epithet. "Out, siren, with
fairy's face and tail of fiend, and leave the husband with his wife!"
Alftruda looked up, shrieked; and then, with the sudden passion of a weak
nature, drew a little knife, and sprang up.
Ivo made a coarse jest. The Abbot sprang in: "For the sake of all holy
things, let there be no more murder here!"
Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake's eye upon her wretched rival.
"Out! woman, and choose thee a new husband among these French gallants,
ere I blast thee from head to foot with the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian."
Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room.
"Now, knights, give me--that which hangs outside."
Ascelin hurried out, glad to escape. In a minute he returned.
The head was already taken down. A tall lay brother, the moment he had
seen it, had climbed the gable, snatched it away, and now sat in a corner
of the yard, holding it on his knees, talking to it, chiding it, as if it
had been alive.
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