“Indeed?” with growing excitement. “This gives me my last link, explains the one fact for which I could not account—the sudden and absolute disappearance of the Teffanys from Penteffan seventy-two years ago. I could find no record of the death of the widow of the last proprietor and her infant son, and yet I could not succeed in tracing them.”
“Then you know who the foreigners were who made inquiries?” “Then you can explain why she called herself Smith?” burst from Maurice and Zoe simultaneously.
“I can explain it now. The foreigners were delegates from the Greek National Assembly, seeking a leader whose very name would rally round him the contentious factions that disgraced the cause of liberty, each fighting for its own hand. The widowed Mrs Teffany, herself the daughter of an Englishman who had fallen in the cause of Greece, had too little faith in that cause to devote her son to it, and removed him effectually out of sight.”
“But why should they want a little boy of five, who couldn’t even fight?” cried Zoe. “It wasn’t as if he was a king.”
“He would have been proclaimed king, doubtless. It was not the person, so much as the name, that was of importance.”
“But why the name? Is there something we don’t know? Is it here, under these seals?”
“Possibly.” The Professor cast a side glance at Maurice. “Mr Teffany desires me to continue?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Zoe, as Maurice nodded. “Tell us, quick!”
She seized the parchment, but the Professor removed it from her hands. “It is your brother’s right,” he said. “He is the head of the house. You observe that the pedigree goes back to Alexius Teffany, who settled in Cornwall in the sixteenth century. Now break the seals, sir, if you please. You observe that Alexius was the son of John, who was the son of Manuel, who was the son of Basil——”
“Who was the son of John Theophanis, Roman Emperor, who died gloriously on the walls of Czarigrad!” shrieked Zoe. “Oh, Maurice, isn’t it splendid?”