On entering the chamber set apart for him in the convent, Harold found
Haco and Wolnoth already awaiting him; and a wound he had received in
the last skirmish against the Bretons, having broken out afresh on the
road, allowed him an excuse to spend the rest of the evening alone
with his kinsmen.

On conversing with them--now at length, and unrestrainedly--Harold saw
everything to increase his alarm; for even Wolnoth, when closely
pressed, could not but give evidence of the unscrupulous astuteness
with which, despite all the boasted honour of chivalry, the Duke's
character was stained. For, indeed in his excuse, it must be said,
that from the age of eight, exposed to the snares of his own kinsmen,
and more often saved by craft than by strength, William had been
taught betimes to justify dissimulation, and confound wisdom with
guile. Harold now bitterly recalled the parting words of Edward, and
recognised their justice, though as yet he did not see all that they
portended. Fevered and disquieted yet more by the news from England,
and conscious that not only the power of his House and the foundations
of his aspiring hopes, but the very weal and safety of the land, were
daily imperilled by his continued absence, a vague and unspeakable
terror for the first time in his life preyed on his bold heart--a
terror like that of superstition, for, like superstition, it was of
the Unknown; there was everything to shun, yet no substance to grapple
with. He who could have smiled at the brief pangs of death, shrunk
from the thought of the perpetual prison; he, whose spirit rose
elastic to every storm of life, and exulted in the air of action,
stood appalled at the fear of blindness;--blindness in the midst of a
career so grand;--blindness in the midst of his pathway to a throne;--
blindness, that curse which palsies the strong and enslaves the free,
and leaves the whole man defenceless;--defenceless in an Age of Iron.