[Exeunt.
Enter Margaret, with a lamp.
Margaret.
It is so sultry here, so hot! [She opens the window.]
And yet so warm without ’tis not.
I feel—I know not how—oppressed;
Would to God that my mother came!
A shivering cold runs o’er my frame—
I’m but a silly timid girl at best!
[While taking off her clothes, she sings.]
There was a king in Thule,
True-hearted to his grave:
To him his dying lady
A golden goblet gave.
He prized it more than rubies;
At every drinking-bout
His eyes they swam in glory,
When he would drain it out.
On his death-bed he counted
His cities one by one;
Unto his heirs he left them;
The bowl he gave to none.
He sat amid his barons,
And feasted merrily,
Within his father’s castle,
That beetles o’er the sea.
There stood the old carouser,
And drank his life’s last glow;
Then flung the goblet over
Into the sea below.
He saw it fall, and gurgling
Sink deep into the sea;
His eyes they sank in darkness;
No bumper more drank he.
[She opens the cupboard to put in her clothes, and sees the casket.]
How came the pretty casket here? no doubt
I locked the press when I went out.
’Tis really strange!—Belike that it was sent
A pledge for money that my mother lent.
Here hangs the key; sure there can be no sin
