Our hero was undoubtedly staggered at the offer so skilfully held out as an honourable exchange for Sir John’s life and the claims De Maupas had long laid to his estates. Sir John’s life was all important in Edgar’s eyes, and could a means be found by which it might be honourably saved the loss of the estates of either ward or guardian weighed with him but little by comparison. The offer of De Maupas was therefore not one to be dismissed without consideration. He therefore took refuge in silence, while he tried to wrest any hidden motives for the offer there might be from the network of clever words in which he half-feared De Maupas had shrouded his real plans. There could be no doubt that Sir John had refused to purchase his life at the expense of his estates and the rights of his successors. That much was clear from De Maupas’s presence in the cell that moment. Foiled in his first move, and unwilling to take Sir John’s life while some profit might be made of it, he had bethought him of a plan by which he might purchase his rights and influence over his ward, the lady Beatrice. Her lands were even wider and richer than her guardian’s, and the wily plotter had hit upon a way of obtaining them that would, he knew, pass muster readily enough as knightly and honourable. The story of his passion for her was doubtless trumped up for the occasion, to give an air of romance and honourable dealing to what was little more than barefaced robbery. Nevertheless, it was a story that would be widely believed, though that Beatrice must and always would loathe the man, Edgar felt not the slightest doubt. It was more than probable, too, that De Maupas had already broached his plan to Sir John, and, meeting with a rebuff, had bethought him of Edgar and hoped to obtain his aid in persuading his master. The more Edgar thought over the scheme, however, and the more he stripped it of its trappings of pretended love and romance, the more he felt it to be every whit as shameful as the first plan by which De Maupas had sought to obtain the Wolsingham lands by threats and violence. "What is to be your answer to my generous offer, young sir?" said De Maupas at length. He still paced slowly to and fro the length of the cell, and his bearing was as easy and confident as ever. Edgar, however, had been not unheedful of the quick furtive glances he had cast at him every now and again as he turned in his stride. "I will have no part in this matter, De Maupas," Edgar replied quickly. "I trust thee not, and much of thy story I cannot believe. More than that, I am not ready to purchase my life at another’s expense." "It is Sir John’s life, too, that thou art casting away like a fool," cried De Maupas angrily. "Sir John hath, I doubt not, already told thee that he prefers death to dishonour. I, his esquire, say the same, on both his account and my own."