h? Can you doubt me longer now?" and he glanced
round indignantly, and acted his part so well that he almost persuaded
himself that he was a much-abused and persecuted person.

"Did no one witness the struggle, Sir Henry?" asked the sceptical
Stanley. "Was there not one during all that time passed by?"

"In faith, Sir Thomas, I know not," he replied. "I found no time to
look. I had work enough to do to save my skin, I assure you. He has
taken her to London."

"The ingrate!" warmly exclaimed Lady Maude, who had just entered the
room. "And Dorothy is worse than he. Let them go, Sir George, they are
not worth the finding; let them go."

"Well, 'twas a knightly thing to do, to leave a lady; a right gallant
thing, nay by my troth it was," said Stanley, severely. "And my
brother is on his way here, too; what will Edward say?"

"Poor Sir Henry, we have judged thee hardly, I fear, but we must try
to make amends for it now," said the dame sympathetically.

"She _must_ be found; she _shall_," interrupted the baron, emphasising
the last word with a stamp of the foot. "Manners shall suffer though
I--"

"Tush, Sir George, let them go," interrupted his good lady. "They will
want to return soon enough."

"Nay, she must be traced and brought home again," said Stanley.
"Edward would die of chagrin else."

"She shall be found," repeated the baron decisively.

De la Zouch had mentally calculated that a slight relapse in his
condition would probably arouse a wider feeling of sympathy for him,
and to secure this end he closed his eyes and gasped for breath, but
the feeling of suspicion was too firmly rooted to be dispelled so
easily, and he opened his eyes again to find his companions as cold
and unsympathetic as before.

"You have not told us all," exclaimed Crowleigh. "Manners would never
leave his host in so graceless a style, I know."

"Have I not told thee the truth, Sir George?" De la Zouch meekly
appealed, "and do not these rents and scars bear me out? 'Tis a pretty
reward for a noble fight is this," and he finished with a sigh of
profound discontent.

"I believe thee," returned the baron slowly, to whom the evidence of
the torn garments and De la Zouch's wounds appeared irresistible.

"And was not my poor horse lamed by the miscreants, who would have
killed it outright had I not interposed myself?" continued Sir Henry.
"Are all these things to count as naught, and is not the absence of
the lovers itself sufficient