"Monseigneur?"
"The Emperor this morning asked me to add you to his household. It is more than I hoped to gain, that he should himself make the request; yet—"
They looked at each other, Allard startled and half dismayed, Stanief's velvet eyes less tranquil than usual.
"Yet I shall miss you, John," he concluded, his voice a caress.
The regret and the tone lay unforgotten in the closed room of Allard's heart. Years after, he could turn and find them there.
So from the gorgeous household of the Regent one man passed to the still more gorgeous palace. Vasili and Count Rosal regarded him with respectful envy; he was elected to membership of the two clubs of the capital's jeunesse dorée, and overwhelmed with friends and invitations.
But the Emperor was not at all inclined to let his new companion remain away from him very much, and Allard was quite as willing to stay at what he privately considered the post of duty. So it happened that he went riding with Adrian more frequently than he went motoring with Rosal, and accepted readily a routine which left him few hours unoccupied.
It was not possible to live at the palace without learning many things. But it required just one day for Allard to learn enough of Adrian to make him smile at ever having thought Stanief imperious. The desire for absolute dominion and power over those near him was the most obvious characteristic of this descendant of a hundred autocrats. Moreover, he tolerated no contradiction, no evasion of a resolve.
"You are not rich in your own right, Monsieur Allard?" he said one day, with his mature directness and self-possession.
They were strolling up and down a terrace overlooking the river, and Allard involuntarily paused in surprise and with no slight embarrassment.