Dick was lying in a bed--a real bed. The butler's couch was princely after the straw of the inn-keeper's boy. He had had as much food as he wanted, and, instead of being cuffed away from the dish, had been pressed to eat more. He had been washed, and his cuts and bruises doctored. It was no dream--a reality. He kept shutting his eyes and opening them quickly. Each time everything was there: the white-washed wall, the latticed window, the bed, and himself--Dick. It was during one of these experiments that the door opened softly, and Lady Dorothy Byng came in. Dick's lids lifted quickly, and his gaze became fixed. She wore a gown of soft white material, and in the white lawn and lace at her bosom, caught in the folds, was a daffodil flower. Her fair hair was dressed in curls on her forehead and neck, and her bare arms and hands were exquisitely beautiful. She had been famous at a court where many women had been fair. To Dick she appeared the most beautiful creature ever created. Her brown eyes looked into Dick's gray ones with a gaze as fixed as his, and more troubled. For fully two minutes she stood still, and then, with a little sigh, came close to the bed. "Are you rested?" she asked gently. "Yes, Lady, I thank you." "Rest as long as you like, and eat as much as you can," she said; "and when you are stronger, perhaps you will tell me whither you were going, and how I can help you." At the inn no one had spoken like this to Dick, and he was at a loss how to answer. In fancy he fell back to the modes of Giles's master, and then, with more confidence, to Giles's own. Recalling his slow, gentle way of speaking, he said: "Your Ladyship is very good. I thank you." But there he stopped, hesitated a moment, and then dropped suddenly into the hurried tones and loose language of the inn--a quite unintelligible jargon to Lady Dorothy's ears. He tried to explain how he came to be lying by the roadside, but she shook her head. "Never mind how you came there," she said. "You were hungry, I take it, and tired, and the side of the road was safer than the middle." Dick remembered Giles had said something like that. He smiled faintly. Could he do nothing to show her Ladyship he was grateful before she sent him away? "I shall not send you away, my child," she answered, smiling. "You will go when you want to." "I shall never want to," said Dick, lifting his eyes to hers, full of tears. Lady Dorothy caught his face between her hands, and looked eagerly at him. "What is your name?" she enquired. "Dick--" he began, and stopped sadly. "What else?" she demanded. But as he did not answer, she let him go. "Very well," she said kindly. "But if you choose to trust me, I come of people used to be trusted with anything." Dick hid his face in the pillow. But he turned in a moment. "Are you for the King, madam?" "Of a certainty," she replied, as if she deemed the question unnecessary--almost foolish.