Aldyth cast on her wild lord a look of more terror than compassion, a
look without the grief that is gentle, or the love that reveres; and
answered:

"What matter to thee my thoughts or my sufferings? The sword or the
famine is the doom thou hast chosen. Listening to vain dreams from
thy bard, or thine own pride as idle, thou disdainest life for us
both: be it so; let us die!"

A strange blending of fondness and wrath troubled the pride on
Gryffyth's features, uncouth and half savage as they were, but still
noble and kingly.

"And what terror has death, if thou lovest me?" said he.

Aldyth shivered and turned aside. The unhappy King gazed hard on that
face, which, despite sore trial and recent exposure to rough wind and
weather, still retained the proverbial beauty of the Saxon women--but
beauty without the glow of the heart, as a landscape from which
sunlight has vanished; and as he gazed, at the colour went and came
fitfully over his swarthy cheeks whose hue contrasted the blue of his
eye and the red tawny gold of his shaggy hair.

"Thou wouldst have me," he said at length, "send to Harold thy
countryman; thou wouldst have me, me--rightful lord of all Britain--
beg for mercy, and sue for life. Ah, traitress, and child of robber-
sires, fair as Rowena art thou, but no Vortimer am I! Thou turnest in
loathing from the lord whose marriage-gift was a crown; and the sleek
form of thy Saxon Harold rises up through the clouds of the carnage."