'Thank you,' Maud cried, letting the tears roll now unchecked, for sympathy overcame her. She fell back again into, her chair. 'Do you know,'-she said unaffectedly, 'we don't care one bit what we do at Chiddingwick; we don't care, not one of us! We'd work our fingers to the bone, even Nellie, who's the youngest, to keep Dick at Oxford. We don't mind if we starve, for we're only the younger ones. But Richard's head of our house now, heir of our name and race; and we were all so proud when he got this Scholarship. We thought he'd be brought up as the chief of the Plantagenets ought to be.' She paused a moment and reflected; then she spoke again. 'To leave Oxford would be bad enough,' she went on, 'and would cost us all sore; it would be a terrible blow to us, though, I suppose, that's inevitable; but to come back to Chiddingwick, and take up my dear father's profession--oh, don't think me undutiful to his memory, Mr. Gillespie, for our father was a man--if you'd known him long ago, before he grew careless--a man we had much to be proud of--but still, well, there! if Dick was to do it, it would break our very hearts for us.' 'I can see it would,' Gillespie answered, glancing away from her gently, for she was crying hard now. His heart warmed to the poor girl. How he wished it had been possible for him to help her effectually! Maud leaned forward with clasped hands, and spoke still more earnestly. 'Then you'll help me with it?' she said, drawing a sigh. 'You'll work with me to prevent him? I know Dick thinks a great deal of your advice and opinion. He's often told me so. You'll try to persuade him not to leave Oxford, won't you? Or if he leaves, at least not to come back to Chiddingwick? Oh, do say you will! for Dick's so much influenced by what you think and say. You see, he'll want to do what's best for _us_--he's always so unselfish. But that's not what we want: you must try and make him neglect _us_, and think only of himself; for the more he thinks of _us_, the more unhappy and ashamed and desperate he'll make us; and the more he thinks of himself, why, the better we'll all love him.' It was a topsy-turvy gospel--but one couldn't help respecting it. Gillespie rose and 'sported the oak,' closed the big outer door, which stands as a sign in all Oxford rooms that the occupant is out, or doesn't wish to be disturbed, and so secures men when reading from casual interruption. He told Maud what he had done; and Maud, who had been brought up too simply to distrust her brother's friend, or to recognise the rules of polite etiquette on such subjects, was grateful to him for the courtesy. 'Now, we must talk this out together,' he said, 'more plainly and practically. It's a business matter: we must discuss it as business. But anyhow, Miss Plantagenet, I'll do my very best to help you in keeping Dick on at Oxford.' CHAPTER XIV. BREAKING IT OFF.