I covered my face. Alas! I believed him; I, who had always been so proud of my lineage, so proud of the brave traditions of the house and its honor, so proud of Coton End and all that belonged to it! Now, if this were true, I could never again take pleasure in one or the other. I was the son of a man branded as a turncoat and an informer, of one who was the worst of traitors! I sank down on the settle behind me and hid my face. Another might have thought less of the blow, or, with greater knowledge of the world, might have made light of it as a thing not touching himself. But on me, young as I was, and proud, and as yet tender, and having done nothing myself, it fell with crushing force. It was years since I had seen my father, and I could not stand forth loyally and fight his battle, as a son his father's friend and familiar for years might have fought it. On the contrary, there was so much which seemed mysterious in my past life, so much that bore out the Chancellor's accusation, that I felt a dread of its truth even before I had proof. Yet I would have proof. "Show me the letters!" I said harshly; "show me the letters, my lord!" "You know your father's handwriting?" "I do." I knew it, not from any correspondence my father had held with me, but because I had more than once examined with natural curiosity the wrappers of the dispatches which at intervals of many months, sometimes of a year, came from him to Sir Anthony. I had never known anything of the contents of the letters, all that fell to my share being certain formal messages, which Sir Anthony would give me, generally with a clouded brow and a testy manner that grew genial again only with the lapse of time. Gardiner handed me the letters, and I took them and read one. One was enough. That my father! Alas! alas! No wonder that I turned my face to the wall, shivering as with the ague, and that all about me--except the red glow of the fire, which burned into my brain--seemed darkness! I had lost the thing I valued most. I had lost at a blow everything of which I was proud. The treachery that could flush that worn face opposite to me, lined as it was with statecraft, and betray the wily tongue into passion, seemed to me, young and impulsive, a thing so vile as to brand a man's children through generations. Therefore I hid my face in the corner of the settle, while the Chancellor gazed at me a while in silence, as one who had made an experiment might watch the result. "You see now, my friend," he said at last, almost gently, "that you may be base-born in more ways than one. But be of good cheer; you are young, and what I have done you may do. Think of Thomas Cromwell--his father was naught. Think of the old Cardinal--my master. Think of the Duke of Suffolk--Charles Brandon, I mean. He was a plain gentleman, yet he married a queen. More, the door which they had to open for themselves I will open for you--only, when you are inside, play the man, and be faithful."