And away went Edward, to be glanced at as he passed through the camp, as a severe, hard, cruel tyrant. Had he only been gay, open-hearted, and careless, he might have hung both the guilty archers, and a dozen innocent ones into the bargain, and yet have never won the character for harshness and unmercifulness that he had acquired even while condoning many a dire offence, simply from his stern gravity, and his punctilious exactitude in matters of discipline. But the evils of a lax and easy-going court had been so fatal, and had produced such suffering, that it was no marvel that he had adopted a rule of iron; and in the pain and distress of seeing his closest friends, the noblest subjects in the realm, pushed into a rebellion where he had himself to maintain his father’s cause, and then to watch, without being able to hinder, the mean-spirited revenge of his own partizans, his manner had acquired that silent reserve and coldness which made him feared and hated by the many, while intensely beloved by the few. Even towards those few it was absolutely difficult to him to unbend, as he had done in this hour of effusion towards Richard; and the youth was proportionably moved and agitated with fervent gratitude and affection. He had scarcely had so happy an evening since he had been a boy at Odiham. He was indeed feeble and dizzy at times, but with a far from painful languor; and the Princess, enjoying the permission to follow the dictates of her own heart, was kind to him with a motherly or sisterly kindness, could not bear to receive from him his wonted attendance, but made him lie upon the cushions at her feet, and when out of hearing of every one, talked of the faithful Isabel, and of “pretty Bessee,” on whom she already looked as the companion of her little Eleanor, whom she had left at home. It might be questioned whether Richard did not undergo more in watching little John de Mohun’s endeavours at waiting than he would have suffered from doing it himself. And not a few dissatisfied glances were levelled at the favoured stripling, besides the literally as well as figuratively sour glances of Dame Idonea. Edward, being of course unable to betray his real grounds for acquitting Richard, had only deigned to inform Prince Edmund that he knew all, and was perfectly satisfied. Now Prince Edmund, as well as all the old court faction, deemed Edward’s regard for the Barons’ party an unreasonable weakness that they durst not indeed combat openly, but which angered them as a species of disaffection to his own cause. The outer world thought him a tyrant, but there was an inner world to whom he appeared weakly good-natured and generous; and this inner world thought Richard had successfully hoodwinked him!