ars. He could indeed perceive that the young
Atheling's minority was in favour of his Norman liege, and would render
him but a weak defender of the realm, and that there seemed no popular
attachment to the infant orphan of the Germanised exile: his name was
never mentioned at the court, nor had Edward acknowledged him as heir,--a
circumstance which he interpreted auspiciously for William.
Nevertheless, it was clear that, both at court and amongst the people,
the Norman influence in England was at the lowest ebb; and that the only
man who could restore it, and realise the cherished dreams of his
grasping lord, was Harold the all-powerful.

CHAPTER III.

Trusting, for the time, to the success of Edward's urgent demand for the
release of his kinsmen, as well as his own, Harold was now detained at
the court by all those arrears of business which had accumulated fast
under the inert hands of the monk-king during the prolonged campaigns
against the Welch; but he had leisure at least for frequent visits to the
old Roman house; and those visits were not more grateful to his love than
to the harder and more engrossing passion which divided his heart.

The nearer he grew to the dazzling object, to the possession of which
Fate seemed to have shaped all circumstances, the more he felt the charm
of those mystic influences which his colder reason had disdained. He who
is ambitious of things afar, and uncertain, passes at once into the
Poet-Land of Imagination; to aspire and to imagine are yearnings
twin-born.

When in his fresh youth and his calm lofty manhood, Harold saw action,
how adventurous soever, limited to the barriers of noble duty; when he
lived but for his country, all spread clear before his vision in the
sunlight of day; but as the barriers receded, while the horizon extended,
his eye left the Certain to rest on the Vague. As self, though still
half concealed from his conscience, gradually assumed the wide space love
of country had filled, the maze of delusion commenced: he was to shape
fate out of circumstance,--no longer defy fate through virtue; and thus
Hilda became to him as a voice that answered the questions of his own
restless heart. He needed encouragement from the Unknown to sanction his
desires and confirm his ends. But Edith, rejoicing in the fair fame of
her betrothed, and content in the pure rapture of beholding him again,
reposed in the divine credulity of the happy hour; she marked not, in