with the warm May wind lifting and playing with her long golden locks.
He checked his palfrey, and murmured some Latin words which the knight
beside him recognised as a prayer, and to which, doffing his cap, he
added an Amen, in a tone of such unctuous gravity, that the royal
saint rewarded him with a faint approving smile, and an affectionate
"Bene vene, Piosissime."

Then inclining his palfrey's head towards the knoll, he motioned to
the girl to approach him. Edith, with a heightened colour, obeyed,
and came to the roadside. The standard-bearers halted, as did the
king and his comrade--the procession behind halted--thirty knights,
two bishops, eight abbots, all on fiery steeds and in Norman garb--
squires and attendants on foot--a long and pompous retinue--they
halted all. Only a stray hound or two broke from the rest, and
wandered into the forest land with heads trailing.

"Edith, my child," said Edward, still in Norman-French, for he spoke
his own language with hesitation, and the Romance tongue, which had
long been familiar to the higher classes in England, had, since his
accession, become the only language in use at court, and as such every
one of 'Eorl-kind' was supposed to speak it;--"Edith, my child, thou
hast not forgotten my lessons, I trow; thou singest the hymns I gave
thee, and neglectest not to wear the relic round thy neck."

The girl hung her head, and spoke not.

"How comes it, then," continued the King, with a voice to which he in
vain endeavoured to impart an accent of severity, "how comes it, O
little one, that thou, whose thoughts should be lifted already above
this carnal world, and eager for the service of Mary the chaste and