"What mean you?"
Lakkon turned in a flash. His face darkened, and a quick, instinctive expression of pain leaped into his eyes. "Would you question my love for my daughter, Prince of Aphur? Know you not that in her very glance, her every movement, I see her mother as I knew and loved her first? And"—his voice gruff at first, grew unsteady—"know you not that I loved her aunt, my wife? What need of your question, then, Robur, son of Jadgor, since—should she go to the Gayana, shall she not to me be lost?"
"She shall go not to the Gayana, I think," said Robur slowly. "Magur will advise against it."
"How know you?" Lakkon asked.
"He himself told me." Robur met his uncle's questioning gaze with a level glance.
"You?" Plainly Lakkon was surprised. "You spoke with him about it?"
"Aye," Robur made answer. "He told me he would advise against it at the present. Listen, Lakkon, my uncle." He went on and told him what had occurred. And, as he spoke, Lakkon's face took on a twitching, his breathing became heavy.
"But she lives—she lives—Robur—she has passed this danger?" he questioned brokenly at the last.
"Aye. And were her father to appear before her—were he to smile upon her," said Robur with evident meaning, "she were less apt to cry to Zilla again in the future, I think."
"Aye." A quiver sat on Lakkon's mouth. For the moment he was wholly the father, no more the noble or the courtier. For the time his thought was of his child, her life and nothing else. "Aye, Robur—I have been remiss, and praise to Zitu that his lesson is by example and nothing worse. I—I shall go to her. I—I shall try to comfort her in this."