d the shame at receiving such
filial kindness from her whom he had cast off for so small a fault in
his displeasure; both these passions struggling with the remains of his
malady, which in his half-crazed brain sometimes made him that he
scarce remembered where he was, or who it was that so kindly kissed him
and spoke to him; and then he would beg the standers-by not to laugh at
him, if he were mistaken in thinking this lady to be his daughter
Cordelia! And then to see him fall on his knees to beg pardon of his
child; and she, good lady, kneeling all the while to ask a blessing of
him, and telling him that it did not become him to kneel, but it was
her duty, for she was his child, his true and very child Cordial! and
she kissed him (as she said) to kiss away all her sisters' unkindness,
and said that they might be ashamed of themselves, to turn their old
kind father with his white beard out into the cold air, when her
enemy's dog, though it had bit her (as she prettily expressed it),
should have stayed by her fire such a night as that, and warmed
himself. And she told her father how she had come from France with
purpose to bring him assistance; and he said that she must forget and
forgive, for he was old and foolish, and did not know what he did, but
that to be sure she had great cause not to love him, but her sisters
had none. And Cordelia said that she had no cause, no more than they
had.

So we will leave this old king in the protection of his dutiful and
loving child, where, by the help of sleep and medicine, she and her
physicians at length succeeded in winding up the untuned and jarring
senses which the cruelty of his other daughters had so violently
shaken. Let us return to say a word or two about those cruel daughters.

These monsters of ingratitude, who had been so false to their old
father, could not be expected to prove more faithful to their own
husbands. They soon grew tired of paying even the appearance of duty
and affection, and in an open way showed they had fixed their loves
upon another. It happened that the object of their guilty loves was the
same. It was Edmund, a natural son of the late earl of Gloucester, who
by his treacheries had succeeded in disinheriting his brother Edgar,
the lawful heir, from his earldom, and by his wicked practices was now
earl himself; a wicked man, and a fit object for the love of such
wicked creatures as Goneril and Regan. It falling out about this time
that the duke o