t thy schemes can suggest would so strengthen that power, as to
find in the heart of the kingdom a host of friends like the Mercians;--or
if there could be a trouble and a bar to thy greatness, a wall in thy
path, or a thorn in thy side, like the hate or the jealousy of Algar, the
son of Leofric?"

Thus addressed, Harold's face, before serene and calm, grew overcast; and
he felt the force of his father's words when appealing to his reason--not
to his affections. The old man saw the advantage he had gained, and
prudently forbore to press it. Rising, he drew round him his sweeping
gonna lined with furs, and only when he reached the door, he added:

"The old see afar; they stand on the height of experience, as a warder on
the crown of a tower; and I tell thee, Harold, that if thou let slip this
golden occasion, years hence--long and many--thou wilt rue the loss of
the hour. And that, unless Mercia, as the centre of the kingdom, be
reconciled to thy power, thou wilt stand high indeed--but on the shelf of
a precipice. And if, as I suspect, thou lovest some other who now clouds
thy perception, and will then check thy ambition, thou wilt break her
heart with thy desertion, or gnaw thine own with regret. For love dies
in possession--ambition has no fruition, and so lives forever."

"That ambition is not mine, my father," exclaimed Harold, earnestly; "I
have not thy love of power, glorious in thee, even in its extremes. I
have not thy----"

"Seventy years!" interrupted the old man, concluding the sentence. "At
seventy all men who have been great will speak as I do; yet all will have
known love. Thou not ambitious, Harold? Thou knowest not thyself, nor
knowest thou yet what ambition is. That which I see far before me as thy
natural prize, I dare not, or I will not say. When time sets that prize
within reach of thy spear's point, say then, 'I am not ambitious!'
Ponder and decide."

And Harold pondered long, and decided not as Godwin could have wished.
For he had not the seventy years of his father, and the prize lay yet in
the womb of the mountains; though the dwarf and the gnome were already
fashioning the ore to the shape of a crown.

CHAPTER VI.

While Harold mused over his father's words, Edith, seated on a low stool
beside the Lady of England, listened with earnest but mournful reverence
to her royal namesake.

The Queen's [113] closet opened like the King's on one hand to an
oratory, on the other to a