Maud glanced at the words herself with a certain vague sense of terror.
'But perhaps,' she cried, 'after all, this Richard Plantagenet himself was of royal ancestry.'
Dick shook his head with a terrible, a despondent shake. He knew when he was beaten.
'Oh no,' he answered aloud, though he could hardly frame the words. 'I know what I say. I've found out all about this Richard Plantagenet, Maud. He was the ancestor of the other people—the false Plantagenets, don't you know, the Sheffield family who left the money. He never was a true Plantagenet in any way at all. It was only a nickname. He acted the parts of the Plantagenet kings, one after the other, in a masque or pageant, and was known from that time by pure fun as Richard Plantagenet. But that was in London; and we didn't know till now he was ever settled at Framlingham.
'And must we be descended from him, Dick?' She asked it piteously, pleadingly.
'Oh, Maud—yes, we must. There's no other way out of it. I've worked up the whole thing so thoroughly now—to my own destruction. I know all about him. His real name was Muggins; and that's our real name, too; and this book—this horrid book gives all the facts necessary to prove our descent from him; and the Sheffield people's, too, who are really our cousins.'
He said it with utter despondency. The truth was wrenched out of him. Maud clasped her white hands and looked hard at poor Dick. This disillusion was just as terrible for her as for him.
'You're quite, quite sure?' she murmured once more in a voice of pure agony.
'Yes, quite, quite sure,' Dick answered with a tremor, but with manful persistence. 'There can't be a doubt of it. I knew everything about this wretched creature before, except that he was a Framlingham man; and there are entries here in the book—you can see them for yourself—that leave no shadow of doubt anywhere about the fellow's identity. Maud, Maud, it's been all a foolish, foolish dream! We are not—we never were—real royal Plantagenets!'
Maud looked down at the ground and burst into hot tears.