This girl's beauty was something marvellous.

In a land proverbial for fair women, it had already obtained her the name of "the fair." In that beauty were blended, not as yet without a struggle for mastery, the two expressions seldom united in one countenance, the soft and the noble; indeed in the whole aspect there was the evidence of some internal struggle; the intelligence was not yet complete; the soul and heart were not yet united: and Edith the Christian maid dwelt in the home of Hilda the heathen prophetess.

The girl's blue eyes, rendered dark by the shade of their long lashes, were fixed intently upon the stern and troubled countenance which was bent upon her own, but bent with that abstract gaze which shows that the soul is absent from the sight.

So sate Hilda, and so reclined her grandchild Edith.
"Grandam," said the girl in a low voice and after a long pause; and the sound of her voice so startled the handmaids, that every spindle stopped for a moment and then plied with renewed activity; "Grandam, what troubles you--are you not thinking of the great Earl and his fair sons, now outlawed far over the wide seas ?" As the girl spoke, Hilda started slightly, like one awakened from a dream; and when Edith had concluded her question, she rose slowly to the height of a statue, unbowed by her years, and far towering above even the ordinary standard of men; and turning from the child, her eye fell upon the row of silent maids, each at her rapid, noiseless, stealthy work.
"Ho!" said she; her cold and haughty eye gleaming as she spoke; "yesterday they brought home the summer--to-day, ye aid to bring home the winter.

Weave well--heed well warf and woof; Skulda [10] is amongst ye, and her pale fingers guide the web!" The maidens lifted not their eyes, though in every cheek the colour paled at the words of the mistress.