'Do you know, dear,' she said, taking her friend's hand, 'if I could have got away for the day, I'd go right down to Framlingham with him, though it seems to me a dreadful waste of money for so useless a purpose.' At that, Maud's eyes flashed; poor dear Mary! she never _would_ understand the feelings of a Plantagenet. 'What I feel is this,' Mary went on, all unheeding: 'I'm obliged to stop at home that day with the children; but I wish I could go: for _if_ by any chance it should happen to turn out that' Dick was mistaken after all, and Giles Plantagenet _wasn't_ the son of Geoffrey, I'm afraid the shock would quite unman him for the moment, and I hardly know what he might be tempted to do in the first keen sense of intense disappointment.' Maud's lip curled slightly. Nursery governess as she was, the old dancing-master's daughter had all the pride of a Duchess--and why not, indeed, since she was a Princess of the blood royal? 'Oh, that wouldn't make any difference, dear,' she answered confidently. 'We _are_ Plantagenets, don't you see? And if we don't happen to be descended from that particular man Geoffrey, we must be descended through some other member of the Plantagenet family. My poor father was sure of it; and it's always been known in Yorkshire for many generations.' However, Mary was so urgent, and so afraid of the consequences of a sudden disappointment--for she knew Dick's nature, and loved him dearly--that at last Maud consented to accompany her brother on his projected trip, and guard him against the results of an impossible failure. Bank Holiday came in due time--a lovely summer day; and Dick and Maud went down together by cheap train to Framlingham. The banks by the side of the rail were thick with flowers. They reached there early in the day, and Dick called upon the Rector at once, sending in his card with name and address at the Pipe-rolls. As he expected, that introduction amply sufficed him. Nor was he disappointed about the preservation of the Framlingham records. The church possessed a singularly perfect collection of baptismal and marriage entries from the beginning of the fifteenth century onward. In less than half an hour Dick was thick in their midst, turning over the dusty leaves of those worn old books with all the eagerness and enthusiasm of a born genealogist. Maud sat with him for awhile in the gloom of that dimly-lighted chancel; but after half an hour or more of hunting page by page, her patience began to give out, and she proposed to stroll away towards the castle ruins, and return a little later to see how Dick progressed with his quest after ancestors. Dick acquiesced readily enough, and Maud went off by herself down the leafy lane that leads straight to the castle.