"My peace, Richard!" said Sir Henry Dacre, sadly; "can a high and honest heart ever feel peace, so long as one doubt, one unrefuted charge, casts a cloud upon it? I would rather die a thousand deaths than have men point at me, and say, 'he was suspected of a foul crime against an innocent lady;' and, besides, even those that I love best, those who hold me dearest, may often ask themselves, 'could it be true?'" "Not a whit!" replied Woodville: "no one will ever ask such a thing. Like a wounded man, you think that every one will touch the spot, and feel the pain in fancy. Cast off such imaginations, Dacre; secure in your own honour, laugh suspicion to scorn, and trust to the noble and the true to do justice to those who are like themselves." "Would I could do so, Richard," said the knight; "and it would be easy, too, did we not know that the wide world is so full of arrant knaves, and that amongst the knaves there are such hypocrites, that honesty has no touchstone whereby true metal can be really known from false; and men rightly doubt the value of each coin they take, so cunning are the counterfeits. Hypocrisy is a greater curse to mankind than wickedness; for it makes all virtue doubted, and fills the bosoms of the good with suspicion, from a knowledge of the feigning of the bad. Besides, amongst those who hold a middle course, neither plunging deep in the stream of vice and wrong, nor staying firmly on the shore of honour, how gladly every one attributes acts to others that may outdo the darkness of his own! No, no; suspicion never yet lighted on a name that ever was wholly pure again. All I ask is, to give me that man before me, let me cram the falsehood down his throat, at the sword's point, and wring the truth from his dying lips, or let me die myself." "Well, we shall see what he replies," answered Richard of Woodville, finding it useless to argue farther with him; "and if, as you suspect, he evades the question, what think you then to do?" "To go with you to Burgundy," answered Dacre; "for I shall be, then, one fitted well to take a part in civil broils--a right serviceable man, where danger is rifest, ever ready to lead the way in peril, having nor wife, nor relative, nor friend, nor hope, nor home, to make him feel the stroke that takes his life, more than the scratch of a sharp thorn that tears him as he passes through the wood." "But you will surely first return," said Woodville, "to say farewell to my good uncle, and sweet Isabel?" "I do not know," replied Dacre. "Dear Isabel, she tried to cheer me; and I know would not for worlds suffer doubts of me to rest for an hour in her heart; and yet they will come and go, Richard, whether she will or not. Each time I take her hand she'll think of Catherine; and though she'll answer boldly, 'it is false,' as often as suspicions rise, yet they will be remembered, and rest for ever as a shadow over our friendship."