"Where is she?" demanded Richard of Woodville. "I know not where she is; I have not seen her for months, nay years."
"Oh, she is not far off when Richard of Woodville is here," said the man, with a sneer. "I know all about it;--ay, Sir John Grey, the smooth-faced clerk, the corrupter of the men of Montl'herry. Can you not produce her?"
"Perhaps I can ere long," replied Sir John Grey. "But what if I do?"
"Why, then," answered Dyram, in the same saucy tone, "before I speak a word, I will have her promise to be mine. She will soon give it, when she knows that on it hangs Richard of Woodville's life. She has taught me herself, how to wring her hard heart."
"She shall give no such promise for me," replied Woodville, sternly. "I tell thee, pitiful scoundrel, that I would rather, with my bosom free of aught like guilt, lay my head upon the block, than force a grateful and high-hearted girl to wed herself to such a vile slave as thou art. If your insinuations should be true, and she has done for me all that you say, full well and generously has she repaid the little I ever did to serve her. She shall do no more, and least of all make her own misery to save my life."
"Then die, sir knight," rejoined Ned Dyram; "for you will find, with all your wit, you cannot struggle through the toils in which you are caught."
"It may be so," said Sir John Grey; "but by my life, bold villain, you shall die too."
"Perhaps so," answered Dyram, with sneering indifference; "but I can die in silence like a wolf."
"As you have lived," added Richard of Woodville; "so be it."
"Stay," said Sir Harry Dacre; "are these the only conditions you have to propose? Will nought else serve your purpose as well? Gold as much as you will."