"I beg your lordship's pardon," he said, "for taking somewhat decided means to obtain a fair hearing, which it seems you were not inclined to give me."
"Are we to consider ourselves prisoners, sir?" exclaimed the old nobleman, confounded and dismayed. "If so, I must appeal to the throne against such violence."
"If you, or Lord Fulmer either, can venture to do so, pray do," replied Arden, calmly. "But I too, my lord, am a prudent man, as well as yourself; and it is difficult to catch me sleeping. I said that this marriage must not go forward; and I now ask you both, my lords, whether you have the king's consent to this proceeding? In a word, whether it was not your intention to act in this business in direct disobedience to his authority?"
Fulmer gazed down upon the ground, and bit his lip; but Lord Calverly demanded fiercely--
"Who told you that, sir? I protest against such an interference in any man."
"It matters not who told me," replied Arden. "Suffice it that I am well prepared to justify what I do. Now, my lord, after what I have said, you dare not proceed to the act which you were about to commit--an act which would have only led you and Lord Fulmer here to long imprisonment, if not worse. If you give up all notion of such rashness, if you pledge me your word, that you will make no attempt to carry through this marriage, till the king's full consent has been obtained, and if this noble lord agrees to ride forward immediately upon the errand with which he is charged by the king, I will restore to you the command of your own house, which I have been obliged to take possession of in his grace's service. Moreover, I will refrain from reporting to the king the intended disobedience which I have been in time to frustrate. If not, I shall feel it my painful duty to put you both under arrest, and convey you myself to York."
It is hardly possible to describe the sensations produced by these words, and the calm and quiet tone in which they were uttered, upon the minds of his two hearers. Lord Calverly was astounded and terrified; for, like almost all very vain and pompous men, he was very easily depressed by difficulties and dangers. It only required to humble his vanity sufficiently, to make it a very submissive and patient quality, however vehement and pugnacious it might be under a slight mortification. To find himself suddenly deprived of all power in his own house, and treated with an air of authority and reproof, by a guest who ventured to back his pretensions by the redoubted name of Richard, was quite sufficient to silence him, although his wrath still swelled and fretted within.
Lord Fulmer, for his part, heard the words which had just been spoken, not only in sullen silence, but with much surprise. He well knew that, hurried on by passion, he had placed himself in a position of very great danger, and that the act of disobedience he had committed, if it reached Richard's ears, was likely to be followed by the ruin of all his hopes, and long imprisonment. But how Sir William Arden had so rapidly received tidings of the commands the king had laid upon him, he could not divine, forgetting entirely that the necessity of his departure on the following morning had been mentioned to Iola in the presence of Constance. At the same time, he felt that to remain would be ruin, and that resistance was vain. His only hope, therefore, was to escape the present danger, trusting that some of the many changing events of the day would afford him better opportunities, or at all events give him at some future time the means of revenge.
All Lord Calverly thought of, after he had in some degree mastered his anger and surprise, was how to retract, in as dignified a manner as possible; and he had just begun to reply, "Well, sir, if I am a prisoner in my own house, I have nothing to do but to submit;" but the voice of Constance was heard, speaking eagerly to some one without.
A moment or two after, she entered with a face still somewhat pale, and a look of much anxiety, saying:--