"
"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.
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