Now it has been already hinted that Elfrida was possessed of a disposition somewhat untractable; in fact, loth as I am to speak aught ill of the fair sex, I must confess that the Lady Elfrida partook, in no trifling degree, both of the fantastic whims of her father Leofwyn and the violent obstinacy of her brother Lothaire. The reader, therefore, will not be surprised when he hears that the Saxon beauty, bowing respectfully to her father, thus addressed him: “Not to thee, my father, not to thee is thy daughter restored; in good and in evil, in life and in death, she shall abide with her preserver--with him who hath delivered her from the grasp of the spoiler.” “Thou art mad, my child!” said the old man in astonishment; “the knight that sued for thee thou didst contemn and reject, and wilt thou now wed with his serving-man?” Elfrida appeared to recollect the circumstances which had preceded her capture, the suitor who had solicited her hand, and the deceit which she had conspired to put upon him: she looked up to the daïs, and beheld Bertha, her waiting-woman, seated by the side of the Norman guest; she glanced round and met the eye of her preserver turned upon her with an expression of the deepest adoration. She looked no further, but immediately, addressing her father, said: “Why should it not be so, my father? To-day thou hast married thine handmaid to the Knight; to-morrow thou shalt marry thy daughter to the Knave.” Her unknown deliverer at these words began to stare about him; he gazed upon his dress, upon his attendants, upon Elfrida; and then, with all the embarrassment of a performer who comes forward to play in a pageant without the smallest acquaintance with his part, observed: “This morning was I a knight, mounted on a goodly steed, and clad in goodly apparel; but whether I am now Norman or Saxon, knight or knave, by my grandfather’s sword--I doubt.” Leofwyn stared; his large eyes were dilated into a truly comic expression of astonishment. “Who art thou?” he cried at last to the bridegroom; “art thou Reginald d’Arennes, or must we hang thee for a rogue?” “Peace, good father-in-law,” said the sham Reginald, shaking off his drunkenness, and leering around him with an arch look of self-satisfaction; “I am not Reginald d’Arennes, but yet as good a man! I am Robin, the son of Egwulph; truly a cunning knave, and a wily.” “I do begin to perceive,” said the waiting-woman, Bertha, looking on the sham Reginald with a disappointed air, “that our plot hath altogether failed.” “Mine hath fared no better!” said the knave, returning a glance of equal disappointment upon the mock Elfrida. “In this I have been but a silly knave, and a witless!”