When years have parted friends between whom love was as a precious pearl, the very bond of the soul's peace, and a day brings them together, it is indeed a foretaste of joy which immortal spirits only can fully appreciate. It is something like to a glorious, everlasting sunshine, when clouds, and tempests, and dangers, and deaths, and darkness, and night have passed away, and one eternal day smiles upon the soul in bliss. Wolsey's heart was softened by his coming fall. It had commenced; it was about to be severed from greatness; and no wonder that its early impressions of love, the desire of shining in the eyes of one whom it then accounted a marvel of acquirement to be admired by an enlightened mind, should return with vivacity into the soul divested of the glitter of the world. Cardinal Wolsey had transferred his first love for Ellen to ambition. He had now had twenty years' experience of the tortuous paths of human greatness, and had found that the smiles of men could never rest long upon one object; that to serve even a king, a man must never be exalted by him, but be always ready to give up all into the hands of the Giver. What such a man, with such a partner for life as Ellen, might have been, is another question--it can but be a surmise. Ellen, however, was in his house, she whom he once had loved with a devotion even beyond the wisdom of Solomon to comprehend; and though another had loved her with an ardor perhaps more truly humble--certainly not more noble--yet even at that moment Wolsey felt that between them, though years had passed away, there was, there must be, an honorable estimation. He had not felt this in the day of his pride; it was only when he was humbled that this returned to him. It returned to him too in the sweetest way it could possibly come--that of being a benefactor to his former benefactors. His hospitality, the last opportunity he ever had of showing it at York Place, was the most gratifying to his spirit; and that day of calmness intervening between his last presiding as Chancellor, and his resigning the office, was spent in the happiest society he had ever enjoyed. The hour came for the interview. Ellen felt it--Ellen knew the secret of Wolsey's heart--Latimer, his friend, knew it also, though Wolsey had believed them ignorant of what he schooled himself to think was his weakness. De Freston never did suppose Wolsey to have been attached to his daughter. It was well they had all rested a night under the same roof previously to their interview. It was well, also, that proud Alice De Clinton had departed; it was well, likewise, that the Cardinal's state affairs permitted him a day's calm, that he might be disencumbered of his consequence. All things favored the interview, and the parties met with mutual respect, the sure forerunner to a happy conversation. CHAPTER XL. THE INTERVIEW.