"Your men have gone, Sir John," said the old priest; "will you follow
them or will you enter?"
Now fear drove out the knight's rage and he spoke in another voice.
"Sir Andrew, why do you bring all these wrongs upon me? My boy is dead
at the hand of Hugh de Cressi, your godson, and he has robbed me of my
daughter, whom I have affianced to a better and a nobler man. Now you
give her sanctuary and threaten me with the curse of the Church because
I would claim her, my own flesh and blood; ay, and my heiress too
to-day. Tell me, as one man to another, why do you do these things?"
"And tell me, Sir John Clavering, why for the sake of pelf and of
honours that you will never harvest do you seek to part those who love
each other and whom God has willed to bring together? Why would you sell
your child to a gilded knave whom she hates? Nay, stop me not. I'd call
him that and more to his face and none have ever known me lie. Why did
you suffer this Frenchman or your dead son, or both of them, to try
to burn out Hugh de Cressi and Red Eve as though they were rats in
rubbish?"
"Would you know, Father? Then I'll tell you. Because I wish to see
my daughter set high among lords and princes and not the wife of a
merchant's lad, who by law may wear cloth only and rabbit fur. Because,
also, I hate him and all his kin, and if this is true of yesterday, how
much more true is it now that he has killed my son, and by the arrows of
that wolf-man who dogs his heels, slain my guests and my grieve.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115