“I utterly decline to be a party to such nonsense,” exclaimed Hilary, angrily, the blood rushing to his face. “It’s all very well for you. A man who assumes a rank lower than his own is at worst a romantic fool; but a commoner who tries to pass himself off as a lord is a paltry cad, and it’s a situation I won’t fill for a single moment.” “You can’t alter things now, as I said before,” Lord Carthew urged. “When it comes out--I should say, if it comes out at any time that we have changed places--I shall own up that it was a foolish freak of mine, carried out in spite of your opposition. Now lie still and try to go to sleep, there’s a good fellow. I can’t eat a second dinner, and I’m certainly not in drawing-room trim. Still I want to see as much of my--or rather of your--relatives as I can while we’re here, so that unless there’s anything I can do for you----” “There’s certainly something you can do,” roared the wounded man, “and that at once. You must contradict your former ridiculous statement, and explain our true positions instantly to Miss Cranstoun and her mother. Otherwise, I shall get out of bed and go downstairs and do it myself, in spite of all the doctors in England.” Almost before he had finished speaking, Lord Carthew had left the room, so quickly indeed that he barely escaped stumbling over the kneeling form of the servant outside the door, who immediately affected to be occupied in straightening the mat. He was extremely sorry for Hilary’s accident, and most anxious to see him well out of it. But he was also already fathoms deep in love, and longing to feast his eyes upon Miss Cranstoun again; besides had not the doctor declared that Hilary would be all right provided that fever did not follow, and that he must not be allowed to excite himself by talking? In the oak-panelled dining-room, Lord Carthew found three persons seated at dinner, and he was instantly struck by the utter absence of resemblance between Lady Cranstoun and the young girl whom he supposed to be her daughter. The former was just such a Douglas as he had described to Hilary; tall, sandy-haired, and limp, with a thin face, a high nose and colorless blue-gray eyes under white lashes, a perfectly well-bred and entirely uninteresting personage of about eight-and-forty years of age, in gray silk, shrouded by a voluminous white knitted shawl of Shetland wool.