admiring the beauty of that stately place, long since passed into other hands, and fallen to decay; but then (if old Prince speaks true) one of the noblest mansions of the West.
At last Cary got away and out; sober, but just enough flushed with wine to be ready for any quarrel; and luckily for him, had not gone twenty yards along the great terrace before he met Lady Grenvile.
"Has your ladyship seen Don Guzman?"
"Yes—why, where is he? He was with me not ten minutes ago. You know he is going back to Spain."
"Going! Has his ransom come?"
"Yes, and with it a governorship in the Indies."
"Governorship! Much good may it do the governed."
"Why not, then? He is surely a most gallant gentleman."
"Gallant enough—yes," said Cary carelessly. "I must find him, and congratulate him on his honors."
"I will help you to find him," said Lady Grenvile, whose woman's eye and ear had already suspected something. "Escort me, sir."
"It is but too great an honor to squire the Queen of Bideford," said Cary, offering his hand.
"If I am your queen, sir, I must be obeyed," answered she, in a meaning tone. Cary took the hint, and went on chattering cheerfully enough.
But Don Guzman was not to be found in garden or in pleasaunce.
"Perhaps," at last said a burgher's wife, with a toss of her head, "your Ladyship may meet with him at Hankford's oak."
"At Hankford's oak! what should take him there?"
"Pleasant company, I reckon" (with another toss). "I heard him and Mrs. Salterne talking about the oak just now,"
Cary turned pale and drew in his breath.
"Very likely," said Lady Grenvile quietly. "Will you walk with me so far, Mr. Cary?"
"To the world's end, if your Ladyship condescends so far." And off they went, Lady Grenvile wishing that they were going anywhere else, but afraid to let Cary go alone; and suspecting, too, that someone or other ought to go.
So they went down past the herds of deer, by a trim-kept path into the lonely dell where stood the fatal oak; and, as they went. Lady Grenvile, to avoid more unpleasant talk, poured into Cary's unheeding ears the story (which he probably had heard fifty times before) how Old Chief-justice Hankford (whom some contradictory myths make the man who committed Prince Henry to prison for striking him on the bench), weary of life and sickened at the horrors and desolations of the Wars of the Roses, went down to his house at Annery there, and bade his keeper shoot any man who, passing through the deer-park at night, should refuse to stand when challenged; and then going down into that glen himself, and hiding himself beneath that oak, met willingly by his
