‘Well, I must consider the point,’ answered Tor, with a smile. ‘She is wonderfully young for her years, and I’m not at all sure that she couldn’t outwalk you, even now, Maud, and I know she could beat you at tennis. However, we will make up our minds on that subject later; and in the meantime you don’t mind my asking her here?’ ‘As if I ever minded anything you did, Phil!’ laughed Maud. ‘I shouldn’t mind if you turned the whole house into a menagerie, and brought up young lions in the drawing-room, if only you’d stay yourself and keep us in order. Everything is so flat and stale when you go away. I can’t think how auntie and I ever lived without you!’ ‘Well,’ returned Tor, with a smile that showed genuine satisfaction, ‘if you don’t mind who I am, or what I do, so long as I remain upon the spot, I have not much to fear.’ ‘To fear indeed!’ laughed Maud, laying her little hands caressingly upon his two shoulders, and looking up at him with smiling eyes. ‘I don’t believe you know what fear is, Phil. I don’t believe you could be afraid of anything or anybody, you great, big, strong boy. You are like the everlasting Bayard one gets so tired of hearing about—_sans peur et sans reproche_—only you really are so; and half the people one hears it said of are nothing of the kind.’ He bent his head and kissed her on the forehead, and then strolled off by himself to think matters over. His idea of asking Miss Marjory down, was a sudden inspiration on his part. He had felt that the present threatened crisis required very careful watching on his part, and that two heads were better than one. He had a great opinion of Miss Marjory’s shrewdness, and was confident that she would be a zealous partizan in any cause she had once taken up. Circumstances prevented him from taking anyone else into his confidence. Much as he would be relieved by discussing the position with Maud or Mrs. Lorraine, he felt that he must not be weak enough to gratify the wish. The fear and anxiety which it would occasion them, and the embarrassment his assumed relationship must cause, would be, he felt, too great a burden to ask them to bear, and they ought not to be put in so trying a position. Then every additional person let into the secret meant additional chances of its innocent betrayal; and more danger was certainly to be avoided, not courted. Miss Marjory, however, did know all, and had promised her assistance if ever it should be required; and Tor felt as though that moment had now come. So he wrote his letter, explaining what had occurred, asking Miss Marjory’s opinion as to the motive the stranger could have had in accusing him of the imposture, and speculating whether it was by accident or by design that he had found his way to Ladywell. He concluded his letter thus: