'My lord,' she said, 'Richard Heywood was my playmate. We were as brother and sister, for our fathers' lands bordered each other.' 'Thou didst say nothing of these things last night?' 'My lord! Before the whole hall? Besides, what mattered it? All was over long ago, and I had done my part against him.' 'Fell you out together then?' 'What need is there for your lordship to ask? Thou seest him of the one part, and me of the other.' 'And from loving thou didst fall to hating?' 'God forbid, my lord! I but do my part against him.' 'For the which thou hadst a noble opportunity unsought, raising the hue and cry upon him within his enemy's walls!' 'I would to God, my lord, it had not fallen to me.' 'Thinking better of it, therefore, and repenting of thy harshness, thou didst seek his chamber in the night to tell him so? I would fain know how a maiden reasoneth with herself when she doth such things.' 'Not so, my lord. I will tell you all. I could not sleep for thinking of my wounded playmate. And as to what he had done, after it became clear that he sought but his own, and meant no hair's-breadth of harm to your lordship, I confess the matter looked not the same.' 'Therefore you would make him amends and undo what you had done? You had caught the bird, and had therefore a right to free the bird when you would? All well, mistress Dorothy, had he been indeed a bird! But being a man, and in thy friend's house, I doubt thy logic. The thing had passed from thy hands into mine, young mistress,' said the marquis, into the ball of whose foot the gout that moment ran its unicorn-horn. 'I did not set him free, my lord. When I entered the prison-chamber, he was already gone.' 'Thou hadst the will and didst it not! Is there yet another in my house who had the will and did it?' cried the marquis, who, although more than annoyed that she should have so committed herself, yet was willing to give such scope to a lover, that if she had but confessed she had liberated him, he would have pardoned her heartily. He did not yet know how incapable Dorothy was of a lie. 'But, my lord, I had not the will to set him free,' she said. 'Wherefore then didst go to him?' 'My lord, he was sorely wounded, and I had seen him fall fainting,' said Dorothy, repressing her tears with much ado. 'And thou didst go to comfort him?' Dorothy was silent. 'How camest thou locked into his room? Tell me that, mistress.' 'Your lordship knows as much of that as I do. Indeed, I have been sorely punished for a little fault.' 'Thou dost confess the fault then?' 'If it WAS a fault to visit him who was sick and in prison, my lord.' The marquis was silent for a whole minute. 'And thou canst not tell how he gat him forth of the walls? Must I believe him to be forth of them, my lord?' he said, turning to his son. 'I cannot imagine him within them, my lord, after such search as we have made.'