“Ah! the courtier speaks.”
Rupert’s voice broke, harshly and without any warning. He saw his Prince in evil case, when he should have been a conqueror. He remembered the night rides, the faith, that had had the crowning of the Stuart as their goal. “A broken heart speaks—a heart broken in your service, sir,” he said.
The man’s strength, his candid, deep simplicity, struck home to the Prince, bringing a foolish mist about his eyes. “Your love goes deep as that?” he said.
“It goes deeper than my love of life, your Highness.”
So then, after a silence, the other laid a strong kindly hand on his shoulder. “You’ll go far and well for me, sir—but put away that superstition of the broken heart. Believe me, for I know”—he glanced across the misty stretch of sea that divided him from Skye—“there are broken hopes, and broken dreams, and disaster sobbing at one’s ears, but a man—a man, sir, does not permit his heart to break. You and I—I think we have our pride.”
When the boats grounded on the beach, the Prince waited till his gentlemen got first aboard, and at last there were only himself and Rupert left standing on the shore.
“You will precede me, Mr. Royd. It is my privilege just now to follow, not to lead,” said the Prince.
“Your Highness, I stay, by your leave.”
The mist had been creeping down from the tops for the past hour, and now the light, outer fringe of it had reached the water-line. The waiting boat lay in a haze of mystery; the privateer beyond showed big and wraithlike, though a shrouded sunlight still played on the crests of mimic waves. And the Stuart and Rupert stood regarding each other gravely at this last meeting for many weeks to come.
“You stay?” echoed the Prince. “Sir, you have done so much for me—and I looked to have your company during the crossing; and, indeed, you must be ill of your exertions to decline safety now.”