"Stop her marrying?" the gentleman said with a lift of the eyebrows. "We mustn't meddle with ladies' marriages, must we? They never thank us. When did you last see Giles? Eh? What now?" Dick had hidden his face in his hands. The gentleman was laughing at him. All round him people were smiling. The page in the gallery above was giggling. No one would listen to him then. Giles's master touched him gently. "Answer me. When did you last see Giles?" "Giles is dead," said Dick, raising his head. "You must know that, sir, or I would have gone to him instead of you. He wouldn't have given me up! I know what will happen to me. But do--do help my cousin! She saved my life yesterday. Oh, sir! I do not care--you may do what you like with me." "Thanks, Dick." And Giles's master took his hand, with a swift, rather stern glance at the amazed guards, the tittering page above, the official with the white wand, waiting with a kind of protesting, yet patient air, behind. "That being so, you shall come with me a little. Excuse me to His Highness, my lord. I shall be with him presently." He walked away with Dick, the noble lord bowing profoundly. "What think you of that?" gasped Lionel, looking after them. "Death," answered the page gloomily, shaking his head. "Do you often bring lunatics to court, sirrah?" CHAPTER XIX GILES'S MASTER AGAIN Giles's master took Dick into a small panelled room, lighted by the setting sun only, and seating himself in a carved arm-chair, motioned Dick to a stool at his side. "And who told you Giles was dead?" he asked, after speaking in French for some moments to a gentleman at the door. This meant the telling of Dick's disappearance from Lumley, saved from disgrace by Master Purvis, as he thought. He had scarcely begun the recital before a door at the far end of the room opened, and a gentleman in a white velvet suit stood on the threshold, bowing. Dick stopped. "Go on," said Giles's master. "The gentleman is a friend of mine. My lord, will you have the goodness to wait in the window yonder? Thanks. Well, Dick. They told you there was an order out for your arrest and so forth?" Dick went on again. His confidence in the gentleman's kindness was restored, and as he had spoken to him at Lumley so he spoke now, and told him all about the Seven Thorns, and of his flight across the fields, and how the Lady Dorothy Byng befriended him, and then turned out to be his cousin. But there the gentleman stayed him. "The Lady Dorothy Byng was your father's first wife's niece," he said. "She was your step-brother's cousin, not yours, Dick." Dick sighed. "That's a pity," he said. "She asked me to have her for a cousin. I was very glad to. Anyone would, I think." Giles's master laughed, and the gentleman in the window half-turned round. "So they told you Giles was dead?" said his master. "Were you grieved then?" Dick did not answer. He bit his lips, but the tears would come.