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Taking the largest goblet on the table, she
filled it to the brim with wine, and touched it with her lips,--then
with a smile in which a thousand radiating sunbeams seemed to quiver and
sparkle, she lifted it towards Errington. The grace of her attitude and
action wakened him out of his state of dreamy bewilderment--in his soul
he devoutly blessed these ancient family customs, and arose to the
occasion like a man. Clasping with a tender reverence the hands that
upheld the goblet, he bent his handsome head and drank a deep draught,
while his dark curls almost touched her fair ones,--and then an insane
jealousy possessed him for a moment, as he watched her go through the
same ceremony with Lorimer.
She next carried the now more than half-emptied cup to the _bonde_, and
said as she held it, laughing softly--
"Drink it all, father!--if you leave a drop, you know these gentlemen
will quarrel with us, or you with them."
"That is true!" said Olaf Gueldmar with great gravity; "but it will not
be my fault, child, nor the fault of wasted wine.


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