“That is your own choice,” she said, coming a little nearer to him.
“Ah, no,” he answered. “There is no choice! I serve a great mistress, and when she calls I come. There are no other voices in the world for one of my race and faith. The library you said, Lady Grace? I must go and find your father.”
He passed out, closing the door behind him. Captain Wilmot chalked his cue carefully.
“That’s the queerest fellow I ever knew in my life,” he said. “He seems all the time as though his head were in the clouds.”
Lady Grace sighed. She too was chalking her cue.
“I wonder,” she said, “what it would be like to live in the clouds.”
CHAPTER XXXII. PRINCE MAIYO SPEAKS
The library at Devenham Castle was a large and sombre apartment, with high oriel windows and bookcases reaching to the ceiling. It had an unused and somewhat austere air. Tonight especially an atmosphere of gloom seemed to pervade it. The Prince, when he opened the door, found the three men who were awaiting him seated at an oval table at the further end of the room.
“I do not intrude, I trust?” the Prince said. “I understood that you wished me to come here.”