"I must turn my face from your honour," said Williams, "before I can attempt to forget that you was Sir Allan, my old master's favourite son; but it is in vain for you to try to pass for a country yeoman. They who have spent their lives in these mountains, and never seen a noble personage, rudely explain their notions of majesty and dignity by describing you; and, by the grace of Heaven, they shall find they guessed right, when they said the stranger from the south-country was a man of another sort of a world." "Let us have no more day-dreams, I asked you about Walter de Vallance." "He is now Earl of Bellingham." Evellin gnawed his lip, and angrily struck his fawning spaniel. "True," replied he, "the King would have him so. He forced these honours on him; and if is thus, by prejudice and injustice, that he tampers with the loyalty of a brave nation. Canst thou blame De Vallance for catching my coronet before it fell to the ground by a false attainder? Why should the title lie in abeyance? Is it not better worn by one allied to our house than by an alien? Who so fit to sit in the baronial chair of our common ancestor as my sister's son, now I am exscinded as a diseased branch." "He is a lad of the fairest promise," answered Williams, "but he will never live to be Earl of Bellingham. Grant that no singular judgments fall on the house of usurpation, yet the honourable blood which he inherits from the Nevilles will so strive with the foul current of De Vallance, that the ill-compounded body will not grow to manhood." Evellin smiled: "Thou thinkest then," said he, "that Walter has played the thief's part, and stolen what he could not honestly acquire." "'Tis past thinking about," answered Williams; "the blame rests not on the King's Majesty, whom Heaven prosper. He is too much raised above the common intercourse of life to look into the hearts of those who take care to approach him with a fair outside. His days are consumed by cares and perplexities, and those who are apt and courteous in business must needs have his ear. I well know that De Vallance gained the royal favour by appearing to be your devoted friend, and by praising you for those qualities in which it was Heaven's will to leave you somewhat defective. Thus he praised your prudence, and produced your flight in proof of your innocence; yet, in the same breath, gave some instance of your rashness, and shewed that flight was ever the villain's resource. So contrariwise were his pleadings and his praises, that His Grace said one day of him, jestingly, 'Whatever my council may decide about Neville, I must keep De Vallance in my service; for though he is an unapt advocate, he is a right trusty friend.'"