"Speak, Dick, speak," answered the knight; "have we not been as brothers since our boyhood, that you may not give me all your thoughts freely? Say all you have to say. Keep nought behind, if you love me; for I have grown as suspicious as the rest, and shall doubt if I see you hesitate." "Well, at all risks," said Richard of Woodville, "it is better to give you some pain, perhaps, than to leave you with your present thoughts. We talked, then, first of myself and Mary Markham, and then of you and Catherine. He saw you loved her not." "'Twas her own fault," cried Dacre: "she crushed out love that might once have been deep and true." "I told him so," replied Woodville; "and he asked, why, as you both clearly wished the bond that bound you to each other loosed, you did not apply to the Church and the law to break it? I said, what perhaps had better not been said, but yet what I believed, that, if you proposed it, she would not consent, for that she loved to keep you as a captive, if not by love's chains, by any other. He fancied, Harry, that, if that incomplete union were dissolved, you might be happy with another--ay, with Isabel." "Ha!" exclaimed Dacre; "ha! Have I been so careless of my looks that a mere stranger should--" and he bent down his brow upon his hands, and remained for a moment silent. Then looking up, he added, "Well, Richard, I have been a fool; but was it possible to stand between a desert and a paradise, and not regret that I could never pass the boundary; to look into a scene of joy and peace, and not long to rest the weary heart, and cool the aching brow in the calm groves, and pleasant glades before me? Who would compare those two beings, and not choose between them, in spite of fate? But what said he more?" "He thought you might be happy," answered Woodville, "and that the only barrier was one that he might prompt Catherine to remove herself. For that object he humoured her caprice, and played with her light vanity. He told me that he would; and I saw that he did so; for his was no heart to be suddenly made captive by one such as Catherine Beauchamp. Besides, it was clear, his words, half sweet, half sour, were all aimed at that end; for ever and anon, when his tone was full of courteous gallantry, some sharp jest would break through, as if he could not keep down the somewhat scornful thoughts with which her idle vanity moved him." "Then I did him wrong," answered Dacre; "for had he succeeded, and led her to propose of her own will that our betrothing should be annulled, no boon on all the earth could have been equal to that blessing. It has turned out sadly; yet I will not blame him; for who can tell when he draws a bowstring in the dark where the shaft may fall? But say, Richard, was he aware you knew his station?"