'That's my name,' the young man answered, with an inclination of the head, rather pleased she should have heard of him. Maud hesitated once more. Then, after a moment, she seemed to make her mind up. 'I'm so glad it's you,' she said simply, with pretty womanly confidence; 'for I know you're Dick's friend, and I dare say you'll have guessed what's brought me up here to-day, even in the midst of our great trouble. Oh, Mr. Gillespie, did he tell you what he wrote last night to me?' Gillespie gazed down at her. Tears stood in her eyes as she glanced up at him piteously. He thought he had never seen any face before so pathetically pretty. 'Ye--es; he told me,' the young man answered; hardly liking even to acknowledge it. 'He said he thought of going back at once to Chiddingwick, to take up--well, to keep together your poor father's connection.' With a violent effort Maud held back her tears. 'Yes; that's just what he wrote,' she went on, with downcast eyes, her lips trembling as she said it. Then she turned her face to him yet again. 'But, oh, Mr. Gillespie!' she cried, clasping her hands in her earnestness, 'that's just what he must never, never, never think of!' 'But he tells me it's the only thing--the family has--to live upon,' Gillespie interposed, hesitating. 'Then the family can starve!' Maud cried, with a sudden flash of those tearful eyes. 'We're Plantagenets, and we can bear it. But for Dick to leave Oxford, and spoil all our best hopes for him--oh, Mr. Gillespie, can't you feel it would be too, too dreadful? We could never stand it!' Gillespie surveyed her from head to foot in admiration of her spirit. Such absolute devotion to the family honour struck a kindred chord in his half-Celtic nature. 'You speak like a Plantagenet,' he, answered very gravely--for he, too, had caught some faint infection of the great Plantagenet myth. 'You deserve to have him stop. You're worthy of such a brother. But don't you think yourself it would be right of him--as he does--to think first of your mother and his sisters and brothers?' Maud rose and faced him. 'Mr. Gillespie,' she cried, clasping her hands, and looking beautiful as she did so, 'I don't know why I can speak to you so frankly: I suppose it's because you're Dick's friend, and because in this terrible loss which has come upon us so suddenly we stand so much in need of human sympathy. But, oh--it's wrong to say it, of course, yet say it I must; I don't care one penny whether it's right or whether it's wrong; let us starve or not, I dodo want Dick to stop on at Oxford!' Gillespie regarded her respectfully. Such courage appealed to him. 'Well, I dare say I'm as wrong as you,' he answered frankly; 'but, to tell you the truth--so do I; and I honour you for saying it.'