"One letter, sir knight, I did receive," replied Woodville; "but it gave me no thought that I should see you here."
The knight gazed at him for an instant, with a look that seemed expressive of doubt as well as wonder. "Here is some mistake," he said. "I trust, my young friend, this catastrophe has not shaken your brain. But one letter have I written, and therein I besought you to meet us at Givet or at Dinant."
Richard of Woodville replied not, but beckoned to his page; and when the boy hurried up, took from him the gibecière which hung over his shoulder. With a hand hasty and agitated, he unfastened the three buttons and loops which closed it, and drew forth a paper, which in silence he placed in the hands of Sir John Grey.
The knight took it, gazed on the superscription, examined the seal, and then turned to the contents; but instantly exclaimed, as he read, "This is not mine! This is a fraud! I never wrote these words. The outside is from my hand; the seal, too, is seemingly my own; but not one of these harsh terms did I indite."
"Then I thank God!" replied Richard of Woodville, grasping his hand eagerly. "Nay, more, I thank the man who wrote it, though it may seem strange, noble knight. But perchance, had it not been for this and the despair it brought with it, I might have listened to the kind friends who would fain have persuaded me not to risk my life, or, as they thought, to lose it, for men who were strangers to me."
"What, then," cried Mary, rising from the ground on which she had been seated, "did you not recognise us?"
"I knew not when I left the shore," replied Richard of Woodville, "that there was one being on that miserable islet, whom I had ever beheld before. I merit no guerdon, dear one, for saving you, for I knew not what I did."
"A thousand and a thousand thanks, Richard," she answered, laying her fair hand upon his arm; "and far more thanks do I give you, than if you had perilled more to save me knowingly; for by such a deed, done for a mere stranger, you show my father that his child has not spoken of you falsely."
"Nay, dear Mary, I doubt it not," replied Sir John Grey; "by calumny and malice, all men may be for a time misled; but henceforth, my child, no one shall do him better justice than myself. You judged from acts that you had often seen and known; I had none such to judge by. But should he need defence hereafter, let him appeal to me. This must seem strange to you, my good lord," he continued, turning to the Count of St. Paul; "but we will explain it all hereafter. All, at least, that we can explain--for here is something that we must inquire into as best we may. This letter has been forged for some base end; but by whom, or for what, remains a mystery, though perhaps we may all suspect."
"Everything else seems clear enough," said the Count, with a smile; "though I understand but half you have said, yet I guess well, here has been love, and, as so often happens with love, love's traverses; and, in the end, the happy meed which attends due knightly service to a fair lady. As soon as my noble cousin appears, though by my faith he is somewhat long in coming--"