He was but the ghost of the gay, self-satisfied, good-natured, jolly Rowland.  Pale and thin, with drawn face and great eyes, he held out a wasted hand to Dorothy, and looked at her, not pitifully, but despairingly.  He was one of those from whom take health and animal spirits, and they feel to themselves as if they had nothing.  Nor have they in themselves anything.  With those he could have borne what are called hardships fairly well; those gone, his soul sat aghast in an empty house.

‘My poor cousin!’ said Dorothy, touched with profound compassion at sight of his lost look.  But he only gazed at her, and said nothing.  She took the hand he did not offer, and held it kindly in hers.  He burst into tears, and she gently laid it again on the coverlid.

‘I know you despise me, Dorothy,’ he sobbed, ’and you are right:  I despise myself.’

‘You have been a good soldier to the king, Rowland,’ said Dorothy, ‘and he has acknowledged it fitly.’

’I care nothing for king or kingdom, Dorothy.  Nothing is worth caring for.  Do not mistake me.  I am not going to talk presumptuously.  I love not thee now, Dorothy.  I never did love thee, and thou dost right to despise me, for I am unworthy.  I would I were dead.  Even the king’s majesty hath been no whit the better for me, but rather the worse; for another man,—­one, I mean, who was not mounted on a stolen mare—­would have performed his hest unhindered of foregone fault.’

’Thou didst not think thou wast doing wrong when thou stolest the mare,’ said Dorothy, seeking to comfort him.

’How know’st thou that, Dorothy?  There was a spot in my heart that felt ashamed all the time.’

’He that is sorry is already pardoned, I think, cousin.  Then what thou hast done evil is gone and forgotten.’

’Nay, Dorothy.  But if it were forgotten, yet would it be.  If I forgot it myself, yet would I not cease to be the man who had done it.  And thou knowest, Dorothy, in how many things I have been false, so false that I counted myself honourable all the time.  Tell me wherefore should I not kill myself, and rid the world of me; what withholdeth?’

‘That thou art of consequence to him that made thee.’

’How can that be, when I know myself worthless?  Will he be mistaken in me?’

’No, truly.  But he may have regard to that thou shalt yet be.  For surely he sent thee here to do some fitting work for him.’

More talk followed, but Dorothy did not seem to herself to find the right thing to say, and retired to the top of the Tower with a sense of failure, and oppressed with helpless compassion for the poor youth.