"I will tell you all, if you come," replied Sir Simeon, to some question the lady had asked; "but mind, I warn you.--Will you come?" "I do not know," answered Catherine, with a toss of the head; "it is your business to wait and see." "Wait I cannot," rejoined the knight; "see I will;" and the lady, turning to her uncle and his companion, accompanied the latter through a long passage at the back of the hall, to the door which led to the ground where the sports of the morning had taken place. The park of Dunbury was very like that described by old Chaucer:-- '----A parke enclosed with a wall la compace rounde, and by a gate small, Who so that would he frelie mighten gone Into this parke, ywalled with grene stone. * * * * * The soile was plain, and smoth, and wondir soft, All overspread with tapettes that Nature Had made herself, covirid eke aloft With bowis grene, the flouris for to cure, That in ther beautie thei mai long endure.'-- The walks around were numerous and somewhat intricate; and whether fair Catherine Beauchamp knew or not the direction that her friends had taken, she certainly did not follow the path most likely to lead to where they really were; but, as she and Hal of Hadnock walked along, she employed the time to the best advantage in carrying on the siege of his heart. He, for his part, humoured her to the full, having a firm conviction that it would be far better, both for Sir Henry Dacre and herself, that the imperfect marriage between them should be annulled at their mutual desire, than remain a chain upon them, only increasing in weight. It must not, indeed, be supposed that he took any very deep interest in the matter; but, as it fell in his way, he was willing enough to forward what he believed to be a noble-minded man's desire for emancipation from a very bitter sort of thraldom; and it is seldom an unpleasant or laborious task for a lighthearted man to sport with a capricious girl. Thus went he on, then, with that mixture of romantic gallantry and teasing jest, which is of all things the most exciting to the mind of a coquette, with sufficient admiration to soothe her vanity, but with not sufficient devotion ever to allow her to imagine that her triumph is complete. Neither did he let her gain any advantage; for, though it was evident that she clearly perceived the name he had assumed was not his own, he gave her no information, playing with her curiosity without gratifying it. "But what makes you think," he asked, "that I am other than I seem? Why should I not be plain Hal of Hadnock, a poor gentleman from the Welsh marshes?" "No, no, no," she said, "it is not so. A thousand things prove it: first, manners, appearance, dress. Why, are you not as fine as my good cousin a dozen times removed, Sir Simeon of Roydon, the pink of court gallants?"