These thoughts surged through her mind as she went upstairs with him through the empty house, in which all at once instinctively, without anything said, she had become as a queen. There was no longer any question in her mind as to what she should say. All was said it seemed to Mary. Could the lady who had been delivered from the dragon think what she should say to her Redcross Knight? It was ridiculous to be so highflown--and yet it was the only simile she could think of. Dragons are different in different cases--sometimes they mean only poverty, humiliation, the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and not any great heroic danger, which the champion can make an end of: her champion had ended for her in a moment the fear of all these things. He had made her see what would be her fate henceforward if she trusted herself to him. He was a little gentleman, of short stature, of appearance rather neat than fine, resembling anything in the world rather than St. George. He was old--was he old? surely not so old as was thought--surely not as Letitia made him out, an antediluvian, a person out of date, whom only his own egotism and the care of Rogers kept alive to keep other people out of their rights. To look at him with his active step, his eyes that grew quite bright and blue in his anger, the color as of a winter apple in his cheek, his neat well cared for person--it was almost absurd, Mary thought, to call him an old man at all. Lord Frogmore put her in a chair when they reached the morning-room, and bade her rest a little. “I came to see if there was not an answer to my letter,” he said, “but there are other things more important to be thought of first. How long have you been here alone exposed to these impertinences? You can’t be left to run such a risk again.” “Oh, it doesn’t really matter now--it is all over now,” said Mary, with a faint smile. “You are trembling still,” said the old lord. “I have a thousand minds to go and thrash the fellow still.” “Oh, no,” she said, putting out her hand as if to detain him. “I am not afraid of anything now.” The old gentleman took the hand which she held out. “Do you mean to give me this, Mary?” he said. Upon this she roused herself, and with a changing color made her last stand, “Oh, Lord Frogmore, I could do nothing that would be injurious to the children,” she said.