merry face of the friar, till at length, having calmed himself
sufficiently to speak, he said, "Courteous knight and ghostly father,
I presume you have some other business with me than to eat my beef and
drink my canary; and if so, I patiently await your leisure to enter on
the topic."

"Lord Fitzwater," said Sir Ralph, "in obedience to my royal master, King
Henry, I have been the unwilling instrument of frustrating the intended
nuptials of your fair daughter; yet will you, I trust, owe me no
displeasure for my agency herein, seeing that the noble maiden might
otherwise by this time have been the bride of an outlaw."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the baron; "very exceedingly
obliged. Your solicitude for my daughter is truly paternal, and for a
young man and a stranger very singular and exemplary: and it is very
kind withal to come to the relief of my insufficiency and inexperience,
and concern yourself so much in that which concerns you not."

"You misconceive the knight, noble baron," said the friar. "He urges
not his reason in the shape of a preconceived intent, but in that of
a subsequent extenuation. True, he has done the lady Matilda great
wrong----"

"How, great wrong?" said the baron. "What do you mean by great wrong?
Would you have had her married to a wild fly-by-night, that accident
made an earl and nature a deer-stealer? that has not wit enough to eat
venison without picking a quarrel with monarchy? that flings away his
own lands into the clutches of rascally friars, for the sake of hunting
in other men's grounds, and feasting vagabonds that wear Lincoln
green, and would have flung away mine into the bargain if he had had my
daughter? What do you mean by great wrong?"

"True," said the friar, "great right, I meant."

"Right!" exclaimed the baron: "what right has any man to do my daughter
right but myself? What right has any man to drive my daughter's
bridegroom out of the chapel in the middle of the marriage ceremony, and
turn all our merry faces into green wounds and bloody coxcombs, and then
come and tell me he has done us great right?"

"True," said the friar: "he has done neither right nor wrong."

"But he has," said the baron, "he has done both, and I will maintain it
with my glove."

"It shall not need," said Sir Ralph; "I will concede any thing in
honour."

"And I," said the baron, "will concede nothing in honour: I will concede
nothing in honour to any man."

"Neither will