took from it an uncut jewel, set in Byzantine filigree work. "Hold
out thy lap, my child; and when thou nearest the foreigner scoffed,
set this bauble in thy locks, and think kindly of William, Count of
the Normans." [14]

He dropped the jewel on the ground as he spoke; for Edith, shrinking
and unsoftened towards him, held no lap to receive it; and Hilda, to
whom Edward had been speaking in a low voice, advanced to the spot and
struck the jewel with her staff under the hoofs of the king's palfrey.

"Son of Emma, the Norman woman, who sent thy youth into exile, trample
on the gifts of thy Norman kinsman. And if, as men say, thou art of
such gifted holiness that Heaven grants thy hand the power to heal,
and thy voice the power to curse, heal thy country, and curse the
stranger!"

She extended her right arm to William as she spoke, and such was the
dignity of her passion, and such its force, that an awe fell upon all.
Then dropping her hood over her face, she slowly turned away, regained
the summit of the knoll, and stood erect beside the altar of the
Northern god, her face invisible through the hood drawn completely
over it, and her form motionless as a statue.

"Ride on," said Edward, crossing himself.

"Now by the bones of St. Valery," said William, after a pause, in
which his dark keen eye noted the gloom upon the King's gentle face,
"it moves much my simple wonder how even presence so saintly can hear
without wrath words so unleal and foul. Gramercy, an the proudest
dame in Normandy (and I take her to be wife to my stoutest baron,