The brow of Sir Henry Dacre grew dark as night. "He is a scoundrel," he cried; "he is a scoundrel; and if ever he gives me the chance of having him at my lance's point, he or I shall go to that place where all men's actions are made clear.--Oh! that I knew the truth, Richard! Oh! that I knew the truth!"
"There is One who knows it," answered Richard of Woodville, "who never suffers foul deeds to rest in darkness. Trust to Him: and if this knave does but support his charge, perhaps your lance may be the avenging instrument of Heaven."
"May it be so," replied the knight; "but I doubt it, Richard. True, he has not shown himself a coward in the field; and yet I cannot but think that he is craven at heart. Saw you not how carefully his letter to Sir Philip was worded? how he insinuated more than he dared say? and, then, why did he not come?--A sickness, forsooth! The excuse of an idle schoolboy. He would not face me,--that is the truth. He fears me, Richard, and will not dare the test of battle."
"Well, that we shall soon see," answered his companion; "your messenger must be at my house, by this time, with his reply."
"I trust so," said Dacre, thoughtfully; "yet he will take time to write carefully, believe me. His will be no rash epistle, written in fiery anger at his cousin's death. No, no; it will be done as if a scrivener had dictated every word, and in a courtly hand. But whatever he does, mark me, he will leave the poison behind, and so calculate as to cast suspicion over me for life."
"But who suspects you, Dacre?" asked Richard of Woodville, with a smile; "not one honest man on earth. You are too well known, for doubts to light upon you. Does not Sir Philip, her own uncle, love you as a son? and can you let the idle words of a knave, like this, disturb your peace?"
"My peace, Richard!" said Sir Henry Dacre, sadly; "can a high and honest heart ever feel peace, so long as one doubt, one unrefuted charge, casts a cloud upon it? I would rather die a thousand deaths than have men point at me, and say, 'he was suspected of a foul crime against an innocent lady;' and, besides, even those that I love best, those who hold me dearest, may often ask themselves, 'could it be true?'"
"Not a whit!" replied Woodville: "no one will ever ask such a thing. Like a wounded man, you think that every one will touch the spot, and feel the pain in fancy. Cast off such imaginations, Dacre; secure in your own honour, laugh suspicion to scorn, and trust to the noble and the true to do justice to those who are like themselves."
"Would I could do so, Richard," said the knight; "and it would be easy, too, did we not know that the wide world is so full of arrant knaves, and that amongst the knaves there are such hypocrites, that honesty has no touchstone whereby true metal can be really known from false; and men rightly doubt the value of each coin they take, so cunning are the counterfeits. Hypocrisy is a greater curse to mankind than wickedness; for it makes all virtue doubted, and fills the bosoms of the good with suspicion, from a knowledge of the feigning of the bad. Besides, amongst those who hold a middle course, neither plunging deep in the stream of vice and wrong, nor staying firmly on the shore of honour, how gladly every one attributes acts to others that may outdo the darkness of his own! No, no; suspicion never yet lighted on a name that ever was wholly pure again. All I ask is, to give me that man before me, let me cram the falsehood down his throat, at the sword's point, and wring the truth from his dying lips, or let me die myself."
"Well, we shall see what he replies," answered Richard of Woodville, finding it useless to argue farther with him; "and if, as you suspect, he evades the question, what think you then to do?"