“My betters! and who be they, maiden?  Thou knowest me not, perdie.  Hath not Sir John Finett shorn his love-locks and eschewed thy service after leaving thy bower the other night?”

This taunt raised her indignation to a blaze—­her bosom swelled at the rebuke.

Still he retained her hand—­with the other she clung to a withered tree, whose roots held insecurely by the rock.  Making another effort, she sprang from his grasp; but the tree was rent from its hold, and she fell with it to the edge of the precipice.  Ere the Silver Knight could interpose, a faint shriek announced her descent:  a swift crash was heard amongst the boughs and underwood—­a groan and a rebound.  He saw her disappear behind a crag.  Then came one thrilling moment of terror, one brief pause in that death-like stillness, and a heavy plunge was heard in the gulf below!  He listened—­his perceptions grew more acute—­eye and ear so painfully susceptible, and their sensibility so keen, that the mind scarcely distinguished its own reactions from realities—­from outward impressions on the sense.  He thought he heard the gurgle and the death-throe.  Then the pale face of the maiden seemed to spring out from the abyss.  He rushed down the precipice.  Entangled in the copsewood and bushes, some time elapsed ere he gained the narrow path below.  He soon found, as in most other situations, the shortest road the longest—­that the beaten track would have brought him quicker to his destination; but these nice calculations were forgotten.  All pranked out and bedizened as he was, the puissant knight plunged into the gulf; but his exertions were fruitless, and he gave up the search.  His love for the maiden living and breathing did not prompt him to drown himself for her corpse.  With hasty steps he regained the Tower, where he doffed his dripping garments unobserved.

Sir John Finett, by advice from his friend Weldon, determined on acquainting their host with the lady’s disappearance.  They had a shrewd suspicion that Buckingham was the contriver of this daring outrage; though from his great power, influence, and audacity, they had everything to fear and but little to hope from the result.  Yet no time should be lost in the attempt.

As they entered the hall, Sir Gilbert Hoghton and several of the guests were still making merry after the feast.  Calling him aside, they communicated the dismal tidings.

“Grace Gerard amissing, say ye?”

“’Tis even so,” said Sir John; “we have yet no clue to the search; but this night shall not pass without the attempt, at any rate.  In the morning we will to the king with our complaint.”

“Boy,” said the baronet to his little henchman, “go to the woman’s suite, and rouse Grace Gerard’s maid.”

“The woman was in the kitchen some half hour agone, conveying her mistress a warm draught, or some such puling diet,” said the page.

“Haste,” cried Sir John impatiently, marvelling at this unexpected intelligence,—­“the lad is blinded by some misapprehension.  I’ll forfeit my best jewel she is not in her chamber.  This interlude works i’ the plot—­part of the trickery now enacting.”