father, thy father, I will not be left to thy father! I love him
not!"

"My father," said Harold, mournfully, "returns to his own earldom; and
of all our House you will have but the mild face of your queen by your
side!"

The King's lip writhed at that hinted rebuke, or implied consolation.

"Edith the Queen," he said, after a slight pause, "is pious and good;
and she hath never gainsaid my will, and she hath set before her as a
model the chaste Susannah, as I, unworthy man, from youth upward, have
walked in the pure steps of Joseph [123]. But," added the King, with
a touch of human feeling in his voice, "canst thou not conceive,
Harold, thou who art a warrior, what it would be to see ever before
thee the face of thy deadliest foe--the one against whom all thy
struggles of life and death had turned into memories of hyssop and
gall?"

"My sister!" exclaimed Harold, in indignant amaze, "My sister thy
deadliest foe! She who never once murmured at neglect, disgrace--she
whose youth hath been consumed in prayers for thee and thy realm--my
sister! O King, I dream?"

"Thou dreamest not, carnal man," said the King, peevishly. "Dreams
are the gifts of the saints, and are not granted to such as thou!
Dost thou think that, in the prune of my manhood, I could have youth
and beauty forced on my sight, and hear man's law and man's voice say,
'They are thine, and thine only,' and not feel that war was brought to
my hearth, and a snare set on my bed, and that the fiend had set watch