After a time, when reason began to re-assert itself, he searched and found the letters that had told the Boy-king the story of his birth. Was there no word at all for him—his father?—save the brief telegram he had received the night before?
Ah, yes! here was a note. His Boy had thought of him, then, even at the last. He read it eagerly.
"Father—dear Father—you who alone of all the world can understand—forgive and pity your son who has found the cross too heavy—the crown too thorny—to bear! I go to join my unhappy mother across the river that men call death—and there together we shall await the coming of the husband and father we could neither of us claim in this miserable, gray old world. Father Paul—dearest and best and truest of fathers, your Boy has learned with you the cost of love, and has gladly paid the price—'sorrow and death!'"
He bent again over the cold form, he pushed aside the clustering curls, and kissed again and again, with all the fervor and pain of a lifetime's repression, the white marble face of his son.
And a few words of that little note rang in his ears unceasingly—"dearest, and best, and truest of fathers!" Truest of fathers! Ah, yes! The Boy—his Boy—had understood!
And the scalding tears came that were his one salvation, for they washed away for a time some of the deadly ache from his bereaved heart.
When the force of his outburst was spent, Sir Paul Verdayne mastered himself resolutely. There was much to be done. It was indeed a double torture to find such an affliction here, of all places under Heaven, but he told himself that his Queen would have him brave and strong, and master his grief as an English gentleman should. And her wishes were still, as they had ever been, the guide of his every thought and action.
One thing he was determined upon. The world must never know the truth.
To be sure, Sir Paul himself did not know the secret of that one day. He could only surmise. Even Vasili did not know. The Boy had cleverly managed to have the day, as he had the preceding one, "all to himself," as he had informed Vasili, and Opal had been equally skillful in escaping the attendance of her maid. They had left the hotel separately at night, in different directions, returning separately at night. Who was there to suspect that they had passed the day together, or had even met each other at all? Surely—no one!