truly loved him.
Ill rest the calumniators of those who can no longer justify themselves!
His faults die with him. The pardon I meant to have granted to his
offences, if he would have sought my mercy, shall turn into favours to
those who share his blood." Walter answered, he could scarce be
comforted even by such gracious words; but he acted his part ill, for
though the King's goodness was too noble to suspect him, the courtiers
nicknamed him the merry-mourner.

"Why speaks not my noble master," said Williams, observing the fixed
posture and quenched eye of Evellin. At last he exclaimed--"I am not
dead;" and bursting into an hysterical laugh, he swore De Vallance
should find he was not dead.

"That is the point," replied Williams, "to which I have long wished to
urge you. Only appear and prove your identity; nothing more is wanting.
But rest on my arm, your whole frame is convulsed. Ah, woe is me, that a
base upstart should thus destroy so true a sample of old English worth!"

"I have survived the loss of my patrimony," said Evellin; "I have bowed
my aspiring mind to the lowliness of which I was born to be the
protector; I have a good King, a good cause, a faithful wife, dear
lovely children. De Vallance shall not long triumph. But say, Williams,
didst than ever hear of treachery so complicated, so deep, so totally
void of even a twinkling ray of common rectitude."

"I know but one character more vile and unnatural," returned Williams,
"and that is the Lady Eleanor."

"I pass her by," said Evellin. "Nature cast her mind in its most sordid
mould; and her heart is capable only of mean inclinations and low
desires; I have, from my youth, reproved her follies, and as she never
loved me, she would see no crime in plotting my destruction."

"What--because you strove to render her worthy her lineage," answered
Williams. "If a bad nature is an excuse for crimes, may not Satan object
to the severity of his sentence. Beauty made her vain, and adulation
made her haughty. Yet other ladies on the same personal graces have
engrafted the lovelier stock of truly noble virtues. The husband whom
she deigned to marry, because she found him a ready slave to her
designs, will live to rue the day when he made marriage a ladder to
ambition. May Heaven guard our Queen from so dangerous a friend. Never
did a falser serpent with a beautiful outside dart its poisons into the
ear of Majesty."

Williams went on repeating anecdotes, which pr