'Dame, I say,' said the old man, as he addressed his aged partner, 'pride is come home from a distance, and I have opened the park gates to the visitor.' 'What art thou talking of? what dost thou mean?' she replied. 'I mean to say, that I have opened the gate to Master Wolsey, and he is gone up the park; and if he meets my lord and lady as he has done me, he'll turn all our merrymaking into misery.' 'What, the lively Master Thomas grown proud! Well a'day, well a'day! Men's fortunes will sometimes change their faces, and Arthur Burch told me Master Thomas was grown a great man!' De Freston was made aware of Wolsey's coming; he waited not for his formal announcement; but came from the hall across the drawbridge in company with Ellen and Latimer to welcome their friend. Oh, that word _friend_! How dreadfully is it abused! How often made a mere conventional term, and used in the world just as interest may prompt, or anything be got by it. One true one is better than a host of pretenders, and a man without that one is miserable. To look for many, is not to know the world; to value one when you have found him is to possess wisdom. Ice, in summer; hail, in harvest time; and a swallow in winter, are as congenial, as a cold and heartless friend meeting you in the day of your rejoicing. Fond hearts met Wolsey at the entrance to Freston Hall. Fond hearts beaming with love, rejoicing in his arrival, and bounding to make him welcome. But they could not fail to remark how stately he had grown! how very dignified! how distant, grand, and great. 'Ha! Thomas, my friend! Welcome to De Freston's Hall!' 'I thank thee, thy daughter, and her friend!' with a most courteous bow of seemingly profound respect, which at once killed all the natural joy of the interview, and told the nobleman that an ambassador from Rome had arrived, in the place of that cheerful friend who was once the delight of his hall. Wolsey was stately, not uncourteous. He had schooled himself most admirably, and acted his part with all the precision of an accomplished performer. So gentlemanly in his external deportment, but resolved to show no intimacy; so very easy in his manner, that no one could be affronted; and yet so little heart, that Ellen could have burst into tears at the strange alteration of the man who once was her liveliest companion. The very domestics, anticipating from Arthur's account the arrival of a great man, and who had so associated Thomas Wolsey with all that was cheerful and gay, becoming, and pleasant, were petrified at the stately gaze with which he seemed to contemplate the architecture of the hall, and the little notice he took of any one in it. 'We have friends to meet thee, Master Wolsey,' said De Freston, evidently convinced that some more distant form was now necessary. 'Some of thy oldest friends will be with us at the hour of noon. They will be delighted to greet thee, after so long an absence.'