I seek you now to pray your leave to visit my earldom.

My lithsmen murmur at my absence, and grievances, many and sore, have arisen in my exile." The King stared in terror; and his look was that of a child when about to be left in the dark.
"Nay, nay; I cannot spare thee, beau frere.

Thou curbest all these stiff thegns--thou leavest me time for the devout; moreover, thy 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 on my soul?
Verily, I tell thee, man of battle, that thou hast known no strife as awful as mine, and achieved no victory as hard and as holy.