The young prince followed with the deepest absorption the words of the man who had known his mother, hanging upon the story with the breathless interest of a child in some fairy tale.

“She knew life as it is given few women to know it.  She was not more than thirty-five, I think, when you were born, but she had crowded into those years more knowledge of the world, in all its myriad phases, than others seem to absorb during their allotted three score and ten.  And her knowledge was not of the world alone, but of the heart.  She was full of ideals of advancement, of growth, of doing and being something worthy the greatest endeavor, exerting every hope and ambition to the utmost for the future splendor of her kingdom—­your kingdom now.  How she loved you!—­what splendid achievements she expected of you! how she prayed that you might be grand, and great, and true!”

“Did you always know her?”

“Always?—­no.  Only for three weeks, Boy!”

“Three weeks!—­three little weeks!  How strange, then, that you should have learned so much about her in that short space of time!  She must indeed have made a strong impression upon you!”

“Impression, you say?  Boy, all that I am or ever expect to become—­all that I know or ever expect to learn—­all that I have done or ever expect to accomplish—­I owe to your mother.  She was the one inspiration of my life.  Until I knew her, I was a nonentity.  It was she who awakened me—­who taught me how to live!  Three weeks!  Child! child!—­”

He caught himself sharply and bit his lip, forcing back the impetuous words he had not meant to say.  The silence of years still shrouded those mysterious three weeks, and the time had not yet come when that silence could be broken.  What had he said?  What possessed the Boy to-day to cling so persistently to this hitherto forbidden subject?

“Where did you meet her, Uncle?”

“At Lucerne!”

“Lucerne!” echoed the Boy, his blue eyes growing dreamy with musing.  “That says nothing to me—­nothing! and yet—­you will laugh at me, I know, but I sometimes get the most tantalizing impression that I remember my mother.  It is absurd, of course—­I suppose I could not possibly remember her—­and yet there is such a haunting, vague sense of close-clinging arms, of an intensely white and tender face bending over me—­sometimes in the radiance of day and again in the soft shadows of night, but always, always alight with love—­of kisses, soft and warm, and yet often tearful—­and of black, lustrous hair, over which there always seems to shine a halo—­a very coronet of triumphant motherhood.”

Verdayne’s lips moved, but no sound came from them to voice the passionate cry in his heart, “My Queen, my Queen!”

“I suppose it is only a curious dream!  It must be, of course!  But it is a very real vision to me, and I would not part with it for the world.  Uncle, do you know, I can never look upon the pictured face of a Madonna without being forcibly reminded of this vision of my mother—­the mother I can see only in dreams!”