“Thou art mad, my child!” said the old man in astonishment; “the knight that sued for thee thou didst contemn and reject, and wilt thou now wed with his serving-man?[Pg 130]”
Elfrida appeared to recollect the circumstances which had preceded her capture, the suitor who had solicited her hand, and the deceit which she had conspired to put upon him: she looked up to the daïs, and beheld Bertha, her waiting-woman, seated by the side of the Norman guest; she glanced round and met the eye of her preserver turned upon her with an expression of the deepest adoration. She looked no further, but immediately, addressing her father, said:
“Why should it not be so, my father? To-day thou hast married thine handmaid to the Knight; to-morrow thou shalt marry thy daughter to the Knave.”
Her unknown deliverer at these words began to stare about him; he gazed upon his dress, upon his attendants, upon Elfrida; and then, with all the embarrassment of a performer who comes forward to play in a pageant without the smallest acquaintance with his part, observed: “This morning was I a knight, mounted on a goodly steed, and clad in goodly apparel; but whether I am now Norman or Saxon, knight or knave, by my grandfather’s sword—I doubt.”
Leofwyn stared; his large eyes were dilated into a truly comic expression of astonishment. “Who art thou?” he cried at last to the bridegroom; “art thou Reginald d’Arennes, or must we hang thee for a rogue?”
“Peace, good father-in-law,” said the sham Reginald, shaking off his drunkenness, and leering around him with an arch look of self-satisfaction; “I am not Reginald d’Arennes, but yet as good a man! I am Robin, the son of Egwulph; truly a cunning knave, and a wily.”
“I do begin to perceive,” said the waiting-woman, Bertha, looking on the sham Reginald with a disappointed air, “that our plot hath altogether failed.”
“Mine hath fared no better!” said the knave, returning a glance of equal disappointment upon the mock Elfrida. “In this I have been but a silly knave, and a witless!”
Dost thou comprehend, gentle reader, the circumstances which led to these mistakes? or is it necessary for me to inform thee that the knave Robin proceeded to Kennet Hold in Reginald’s apparel, with the purpose of revenging, by his wedding with the heiress, the death of his master,[Pg 131] which he fancied had been occasioned by the heir; that at Kennet Hold the said knave met with the counterplot which had been prepared by the jocose Saxon, and became the husband of the maid instead of the mistress; that Reginald, recovering from his swoon after the departure of his attendant, advanced towards Kennet Hold, and encountered, in his way, his new acquaintance, Richard de Mallory, from whom he had the good fortune to rescue the life of Lothaire and the honour of Elfrida?
There is yet one point unexplained. The reader must be aware that a considerable interval took place between the memorable blow given by Lothaire and his rencontre with De Mallory. Upon this point the MS. makes mention of Winifred, a certain arch-damsel, who—— but Decorum puts her forefinger on her mouth—I have done.