Saxon listened attentively to the story, and heaved a sigh of disappointment at the end.
"There's nothing in it, my girl," he said. "No proof of treasure there, eh?"
"No; no treasure," said Vaiti, looking at the ground as she walked.
"What then?" asked Saxon curiously. He saw she had something in reserve.
Vaiti suddenly flamed out in eloquent Maori.
"What then, my father? Am I one who sees through men's heads, that I can tell what was in the mind of you as you looked at the jewel, and turned yellow and green like a parrot, only to see it? What then? I do not know. I walk in the dark, and the light is in your hand, not in mine. As for you, you have made your brain dull with the brandy and the kava, so that you cannot see at all. What then? Tell me yourself, for I do not know. I know only that there is something to be told."
"Don't be rough on your poor old father," said Saxon pathetically. "I'd have knocked the stuffing out of any man who said half as much, but I spoil you, by Gad, I do. I don't know—I can't think, somehow or other. But there was a story about the Vasilieffs—the johnnies who had that crest—people I used to stay with when I went to——"
He broke off, smashed a spider-lily bloom with his stick, and began afresh.
"Junia Vasilieff—what was it she did? Big princes they were, and much too close to the throne to be safe company.... Junia Vasili—I have it! Yes—the end of the story was in the Sydney papers, time you were a little kid. I remember. They were to have married her to the Czarewitch, just to make things safe. Her claim to the throne was big enough to have started a revolution any day, if it had been asserted.... Poor little Junia!—only sixteen when I knew—when the marriage was talked of—and such golden hair as she had! She hated the whole thing; courts and ceremony weren't in her line. But she was a gentle little creature, and I never thought she'd have had the spirit to do as she did."
He turned the seal over in his fingers, as if reading the past from its glittering surface.