‘"No, sire; I did not observe him so closely.”
‘"How poor and ragged the child was! his very shoes were broken. Did you see his shoes?—and that frail bit of serge was all his covering against the keen blast. O George,” cried he, as his lip shook with emotion, “what would you say if that poor boy, all wretched and wayworn as you saw him, were the true heir of a throne, and that the proudest in Europe? What a lesson for human greatness that! It was a scurvy trick you played me that night, sir,” said he, quickly changing, for his moods were ever thus, and you never could guess how long any theme would engage him—“a scurvy trick, sir, to pry into what your master desired you should not know. I had my own good reasons for what I did, and it ill became you to contravene them; but it was like your cloth—ay, sirrah, it was the trick of all your kind.”
‘Out of this he fell a-weeping over the fallen fortunes of his house, asking again and again if history contained anything its equal; and saying that other dynasties had fallen through their crimes and cruelties, but that his house had been ruined by trustfulness and generosity; and so he forgot the boy and all about him.’
‘And think you it was to this youth that his Royal Highness bequeathed the sum mentioned in his will, together with his George, the Grand Cross of Malta, and the St. John of Jerusalem, for so the Cardinal York tells me the bequest runs?’
‘As to that I can say nothing,’ Kelly replied.
‘I have heard,’ said the Cardinal again, ‘that in a sealed letter to his brother York the Prince acknowledges this boy as his son, born in wedlock, his mother being of an ancient and noble house.’ Then quickly changing his tone, he asked, ‘How are we to find him, Kelly? Do you believe that he still lives?’
‘I have no means of knowing; but if I wished to trace a man, not merely in Europe, but through the globe itself, I am aware of but one police to trust to.’
‘And that?’
‘The Jesuits: they are everywhere; and everywhere cautious, painstaking, and trustworthy; they are well skilled in pursuits like these; and even when they fail—and they seldom fail—they never compromise those who employ them.’
‘Well,’ said the Cardinal, ‘they have failed here. They have been on the track of this young fellow for years back; and when I tell you that the craftiest of them all, Massoni, has not been able to find a clue to him, what will you say?’