"Neither to the earl nor his earldom," answered Matilda firmly,
"but to Robert Fitz-Ooth and his love."

"That I well knew," said the earl; "and though the ceremony
be incomplete, we are not the less married in the eye
of my only saint, our Lady, who will yet bring us together.
Lord Fitzwater, to your care, for the present, I commit
your daughter.--Nay, sweet Matilda, part we must for a while;
but we will soon meet under brighter skies, and be this the seal
of our faith."

He kissed Matilda's lips, and consigned her to the baron, who glowered
about him with an expression of countenance that showed he was mortally
wroth with somebody; but whatever he thought or felt he kept to himself.
The earl, with a sign to his followers, made a sudden charge
on the soldiers, with the intention of cutting his way through.
The soldiers were prepared for such an occurrence, and a desperate
skirmish succeeded. Some of the women screamed, but none of them fainted;
for fainting was not so much the fashion in those days, when the ladies
breakfasted on brawn and ale at sunrise, as in our more refined age
of green tea and muffins at noon. Matilda seemed disposed to fly again
to her lover, but the baron forced her from the chapel. The earl's
bowmen at the door sent in among the assailants a volley of arrows,
one of which whizzed past the ear of the abbot, who, in mortal fear
of being suddenly translated from a ghostly friar into a friarly ghost,
began to roll out of the chapel as fast as his bulk and his holy robes
would permit, roaring "Sacrilege!" with all his monks at his heels,
who were, like himself, more intent to go at once than to stand upon
the order of their going. The abbot, thus pressed from behind,