s; he scarcely even
looked at us. It was not any thing he did which made me feel so; it was
just himself.

Surely never did man dress more superbly than he. I recollect thinking
that the King was not half so fine; yet King Edward liked velvet and
gold as well as most men. My Lord my father never wore worsted summer
tunics or woollen winter cloaks, like others. Silk, velvet, samite, and
cloth of gold, were his meanest wear; and his furs were budge, ermine,
miniver, and gris. I can remember hearing how once, when the furrier
sent him in a robe of velvet guarded with hare's fur, he flung it on one
side in a fury, and ordered the poor man to be beaten cruelly. He
always wore much golden broidery, and buttons of gems or solid gold; and
he never would wear a suit of any man's livery--not even the King's,--
save once, when he wore the Earl of Chester's at the coronation of the
Queen of France, just to vex King Edward--as it sorely did, for he was
then a proscribed fugitive, who had no right to use it.

It is a hard matter when a child is frightened of its own father. It is
yet harder when he makes it hate him. Ah, it is easy to say, That was
wicked of thee. So it was: and I know it. But doth not sin lead to
sin?--spring out of it, like branches from a stem, like leaves from a
branch? And when one man's act of sin creates sin in another man, and
that again in a third, whose is the sin--the black root, whereof came
the rotten branches and the withered leaves? Are we not all our
brothers' and our sisters' keepers? Well, it will not answer to pursue
that road: for I know well I should trace up the sin too high, to one of
whom it were not meet for me to speak in the same breath with ugly
words. Ay me! what poor weak things we mortal creatures are! Little
marvel, little marvel for the woe that was wrought!--so fair, so fair
she was! She had the soul of a fiend with the face of an angel. Was it
any wonder that men--ay, and some women--were beguiled with that angel
face, and fancied but too rashly that the soul must be as sweet as it?
God have mercy on all Christian souls! Verily, I myself, only this last
spring-time, was ready to yield to the witch's spell--never was woman
such enchantress as she!--and athwart all the past, despite all I knew,
gazing on that face, even yet fairer than the faces of younger women, to
think it possible that all the tales were false, and all the past a
vision of the night, and that the