“A long life, full of many sorrows!” observed the younger one, her eyes full of tears. “He has outlived all that he loved.”
“Except the little Otto.”
Their glances met, for even here there was a question.
As if their thought had penetrated the haze which is, perhaps, the mist that hides from us the gates of heaven, the old King opened his eyes.
“Otto!” he said. “I—wish—”
Annunciata bent over him. “He is coming, father,” she told him, with white lips.
She slipped to her knees beside the bed, and looked up to Doctor Wiederman with appealing eyes.
“I am afraid,” she whispered. “Can you not—?”
He shook his head. She had asked a question in her glance, and he had answered. The Crown Prince was gone. Perhaps the search would be successful. Could he not be held, then, until the boy was found? And Doctor Wiederman had answered “No.”
In the antechamber the Council waited, standing and without speech. But in an armchair beside the door to the King’s room the Chancellor sat, his face buried in his hands. In spite of precautions, in spite of everything, the blow had fallen. The Crown Prince, to him at once son and sovereign, the little Crown Prince, was gone. And his old friend, his comrade of many years, lay at his last hour.