"It will be my strength and my support, dear Mary," answered Woodville; "and I do think that if I could but win a promise from you to be mine, it would so nerve my heart and arm in the hour of strife, that all men should own I had won you well--Say, will you promise, my sweet lady?" "I will promise that I will, if I may," replied Mary; "but alas! Richard, the entire fulfilment of that promise must depend upon another. We poor women have but little power, even over our own fate and persons; but I will love none but you, Richard, wherever I go; and you will not doubt that love, though it be spoken so freely?" "Nay, Heaven forbid!" said Richard of Woodville; "and were it not that you are my uncle's ward, I would put that love, dear Mary, to the proof, by asking you to fly with me and seek out some friendly priest who would bind our fate so fast together, that it would take greater power than any one in the land can boast, to sever it again. But I would not be ungrateful to one who has been a father to me." "Nor must I be ungrateful, either to him or to my own father, Richard," replied Mary Markham; "you would not love me long if I could be so." "I know you cannot, Mary," answered her lover; "but tell me who he is, Mary, that I may try to win him to hear my suit. I knew not that your father was alive--unless, indeed, the idle gossip--but no more of that. Whoever he be, I will trust to merit his esteem, and surely his daughter's love will be no bad commendation to him. I have hopes, too, of advancement, if ambition be his passion, such, indeed, as I have never had before. The King--he who was with us not a month ago as Hal of Hadnock--" "Ay, Dacre told us who he was," cried Mary Markham. "The King, he shows me great favour," continued Woodville, "and has given me letters to many at the court of Burgundy, promising to send for me, too, as soon as he has service for me here. With a true heart, and no unpractised hand, I do not fear that I shall fail of winning honour; and though I be but a poor gentleman, yet, as I do know that riches or poverty would make no difference in Mary Markham to me, so I cannot believe that it will change me in her eyes." "Oh no!" she answered, but then added, with a sigh, "but my father, Richard! It is long since I have seen him, yet he was kind and noble, just and true, if I remember right. I recollect him well, with his grey hair, changed more by sorrow than time. I thought you knew the whole, for Isabel does; but I promised faithfully not to speak of my fate or his to any one, for reasons that he judged sufficient, when he gave me into good Sir Philip's charge; and I must not break my word even for you, Richard."