Mary paused thoughtfully, and cast down her eyes; but then a moment after she raised them again with a look of relief, as if she had settled the whole in her own mind. "I will be warrant," she said, "that some great peril has beset our poor Ella, and that he has gone to deliver her: most likely the hateful persecution of this same base man. Nothing else--nothing, I know, would have kept Richard of Woodville away from Mary Grey--if, indeed, he knew that I was here." "Nay, I must do him justice," answered the knight; "he did not know it, Mary; and perhaps what you suppose is the case, for the man did mention something of danger, and besought him to save her. We will look upon it in as fair a light as may be, and I will send to him early in the morning to bid him come hither and explain. He will then have two advocates instead of one, my child; and I am very ready to be convinced, for I love him for his love to you." "Can you not send to-night?" whispered Mary Grey, resting her hands upon her father's arm. "Nay, nay," replied the knight, smiling kindly on her. "It is late to-night, dear girl. To-morrow will do." Does to-morrow ever do? But seldom; for the hour that is, we can only call our own. All that is to come is in the hands of that dark mysterious fate, which, ruling silent and unseen the acts and wills of men, reserves to itself, in its own dim council-chamber, each purpose unfulfilled, each resolution made and not performed; sporting with chances and with hopes, trampling into dust expectations and designs, and leaving to man but the past for his instruction, and the present for his energies. The word to-morrow should be blotted out from the catalogue. It is what never exists in the form we think to find it; and thus it was with Sir John Grey. When the morning came he wrote briefly to Richard of Woodville, requesting him to come to him, and making the tone of his epistle more kindly than his words the night before; but it was returned unopened from the Graevensteen, with the tidings that the young knight and all his band had set out on some expedition a few hours after midnight. As she heard the answer, the gay and happy eyes of Mary Grey filled with tears; and her father, gazing on her, reproached himself for having lost the moment that was theirs. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE RESCUE.