in all her varied and glorious forms; and in February, always in February, Verdayne found time to steal away from England for a brief visit to that far-off country in the south of Europe from which the Boy came.  Many remembered that Verdayne, like an uncle of his, Lord Hubert Aldringham, had been much given to foreign travel in his younger days and had made many friends and acquaintances among the nobility and royalty of other lands, and although it was strange, they thought it was not at all improbable that the lad was connected with some one of those great families across the Channel.

As for Paul and the Boy, they knew not what people thought or said, and cared still less.  There was too strong a bond of camaraderie between them to be disturbed by the murmurings of a wind that could blow neither of them good or ill.

And the Boy was now twenty years of age.

Suddenly Paul Zalenska broke their long silence.

“Do you know, Uncle, I sometimes have a queer feeling of fear that my father must have done something terrible in his life—­something to make strong men shrink and shudder at the thought—­something—­criminal!  Oh, I dare not think of that!” he went on hastily.  “I dare not—­I dare not!  I think the knowledge of it would drive me mad!”

His voice sank to a half-whisper and there was a note of horror in his words.

“But, what a king he must have been!—­what a miserable apology for all that royalty should be by every law, human or divine!  Why isn’t his name heralded over the length and breadth of the kingdom in paeans of praise?  Why isn’t the whole world talking of his valor, his beneficence, his statesmanship?  What is a king created a king for, if not to make history?”

He fought silently for a moment to regain his self-control, forcing the hideous idea from him and at last speaking with an air of finality beyond his years.

“No, I won’t think of it!  May the King of the world endow me with the strength of the gods and the wisdom of the ancient seers, that I may make up by my efficiency for all my father’s deplorable lack, and become all that my mother meant me to be when she gave me to the world!”

He stretched out his arms in a passionate appeal to Heaven, and Paul Verdayne, looking up at him, realized as he had never before that the Boy certainly had within him the stuff of which kings should be made.

The Boy was not going to disappoint him.  He was going to justify the high hopes cherished for him so long.  He was going to be a man after his mother’s own heart.

“Uncle,” went on the Boy, wrought up to a high pitch of emotion, and throwing himself down again at Verdayne’s feet, “I feel with Louis XVI, ‘I am too young to reign!’ Why haven’t I ever had a father to teach and train me in the way I should go?  Every boy needs a good father, princes most of all, so much more is expected of us poor royal devils than of more ordinary