"That I will do," replied Mary. "I will tell you the whole tale after supper, and hers is a very sad one. But first, to set your mind fully at ease, let me say, that the only evil thing Richard has done in all this affair, was showing some want of courtesy to the poor girl herself; for when, after having received from him kind and generous protection in her hour of sorrow and of danger, she thought to journey to join her friends in Burgundy, under the safeguard of his little band--Richard, fearing too much what men might say, or perchance, fancying that Mary might be jealous, unkindly refused to take her; and it was I who bade her go, and promised her that, with a free heart, I would let all idle fancies pass me by as evening winds." "Your love is very confiding, my sweet child," replied the knight. "And it will never be wronged," said Mary, warmly. "I would not have given it, father, to one unworthy of such trust; and when the confidence ends, the love will end with it. But that will never be." "Yet, my dear child," answered the knight, gravely, "as I told you I had, in the very first instance, an intimation of this fact from some unknown hand, and then--" "Some idle mischief-maker," cried Mary, "who chanced to see them on the road, and in his own fancy made the evil he would ascribe to Richard." "But then comes another, lately arrived from England," continued Sir John Grey; "a gentleman of good repute, who tells the same story with strange exactness, if it be false; and then, when questioned by me, Sir Philip de Morgan says, with a worldly laugh at young men's follies, that he has heard something of it." "But who was this man from England?" asked Mary, eagerly, "this gentleman of good repute?--I doubt, my father! I doubt!--Methinks I could name him at once." "Do so, then," replied her father; "I will tell you if you are right." "Simeon of Roydon," said his daughter; and the knight nodded his assent. "A gentleman of good repute!" cried Mary; "a false and perjured knave, my father! One who has already foully slandered poor Harry Dacre, yet, with a craven cautiousness, has kept himself free from the lance's point; one who dare not, before Richard of Woodville's face, say aught but, that he has heard such reports--that he vouches not for them--that he mentioned them in thoughtlessness. Out upon the base, ungenerous hound! Why, this very man, for his shameless persecution of this poor girl, and on the bold accusation of good Sir Philip Beauchamp, my second father, is banished from England for two years, and vowed revenge on her and all of us. Had it not been for the King's presence, I believe noble Sir Philip would have crushed him as an earwig or a wasp."