The parents of Paul Verdayne—­Sir Charles and Lady Henrietta—­were very fond of their young guest, and made much of his annual visits.  As for Paul himself, he never seemed to be perfectly happy anywhere if the young fellow were out of his sight.

He had made himself very much distinguished, had this Paul Verdayne.  He had found out how to get the most out of his life and accomplish the utmost good for himself and his England with the natural endowments of his energetic and ambitious personality.  He had become a famous orator, a noted statesman, a man of brain as well as brawn.  People were glad to listen when he talked.  He inspired them with the idea—­so nearly extinct in this day and age of the world—­that life after all was very much worth the living.  He stirred languid pulses with a dormant enthusiasm.  He roused torpid brains to thought.  He had ideas and had also a way of making other people share those ideas.  England was proud of Paul Verdayne, as she had good reason to be.  And he was only forty-three years old even now.  What might he not accomplish in the future for the land to which he devoted all his talents, his tireless, well-directed activities?

He had given himself up so thoroughly to political interests that he had not taken time to marry.  This was a great disappointment to his mother, Lady Henrietta, who had set her heart upon welcoming a daughter-in-law and a houseful of merry, romping grandchildren before the sun of her life had gone down forever.  It was also a secret source of disappointment to certain younger feminine hearts as well, who in the days of his youth, and even in the ripeness of later years, had regarded Paul Verdayne with eyes that found him good to look upon.  But the young politician had never been a woman’s man.  He was chivalrous, of course, as all well-bred Englishmen are, but he kept himself as aloof from all society as politeness would permit, and the attack of the most skillfully aimed glances fell harmless, even unheeded, upon his impenetrable armor.  He might have married wherever he had willed, but Society and her fair votaries sighed and smiled in vain, and finally decided to leave him alone, to Verdayne’s infinite relief.

As for the Boy, he was always, as I have said, a mystery, always a topic for the consideration of the gossips.  Every year since he was a little fellow six years old he had come to Verdayne Place for the summer; at first, accompanied by his nurse, Anna, and a silver-haired servant, curiously named Dmitry.  Later the nurse had ceased to be a necessity, and the old servant had been replaced by Vasili, a younger, but no less devoted attendant.  As the Boy grew older, he had learned to hunt and took long rides with his then youthful host across the wide stretch of English country that made up the Verdayne estates and those of the neighboring gentry.  Often they cruised about in distant waters, for the young fellow from his earliest years shared with the elder an absorbing love of nature