She _was_ ill and weakly; she was well-nigh maddened from scenes and sounds of blood.

I had besought her not to attend me, but a wife's agony could not be restrained, and if we had refused her the protection she so wildly craved, had discovered her person to your highness, would it have availed thee aught?
a being young, scarce past her childhood--miserable, maddened well-nigh to death, her life wrapt up in her husband's, which was forfeited to thee." "The wife of a traitor, the offspring of a traitress, connected on every side with treason, and canst ask if her detention would have availed us aught?
Joan, Joan, thy defence is but a weak one," answered the king, sternly, but he called her "Joan," and that simple word thrilled to her heart as the voice of former years, and her father felt a sudden gush of tears fall on the hand he had not withdrawn, and vainly he struggled against the softening feelings those tears had brought.

It was strange that, angered as he really was, the better feelings of Edward should in such a moment have so completely gained the ascendency.

Perhaps he was not proof against the contrast before him, presented in the persons of Buchan and Gloucester; the base villainy of the one, the exalted nobility of the other, alike shone forth the clearer from their unusually close contact.

In general, Edward was wont to deem these softening emotions foolish weaknesses, which he would banish by shunning the society of all those who could call them forth.