"Robert Allard, sire, my younger brother. He died two years ago."
"Soon after you came here, then?"
"While I was on the Nadeja, sire, making the voyage."
"Have you no other relatives there?"
"Yes; my aunt, Mrs. Leslie, and my cousin, her daughter."
Adrian studied his companion's pallor with a certain scientific interest, idly scribbling on the margin of the atlas without regarding what he wrote.
"You regret your home?" he inquired.
Allard bit his lip to steady its quiver, fiercely unwilling to bare his old pain for the diversion of this coldly ennuied inquisitor.
"There is nothing to call me home, sire," he replied. "My brother is not living, and my cousin, who was betrothed to him, has no wish or need of me. I think I never want to see the place as it is now. My life is here."
"You loved her," Adrian said calmly. "How much you give one another, you quiet, gray-eyed people! Do not look like that, Allard;" he actually smiled. "I am too used to my intricate and intriguing subjects to fail in reading your truthfulness. And I have not watched you with the ladies of the court without learning that some woman, one that you loved, sat at the door of your heart."