“Ah! I know. I know that,” replied King Umberto briskly. “Good! Sit down.”
Then, when His Majesty had settled himself again in his padded writing-chair—at that table where for many weary hours each day he attended to matters of State affecting forty millions of his subjects—he looked straight at the man before him, and asked suddenly in Italian:
“Signor Waldron, can you keep a Secret?”
“That is my profession,” was the other’s calm reply. “And any secret of Your Majesty’s will, I assure you, be safe in my keeping.”
The King paused. He was dressed plainly, for after the banquet given that night to a Russian royalty he had changed from his striking uniform into easier clothes before commencing work. Yet in his face was a deep, earnest, noble expression, for he was a monarch who had the welfare of his nation very deeply and genuinely at heart. His dark, deep-set eyes, his slightly sallow skin, and the three lines across his brow told their own tale. Though a King, the crown bore heavily upon his head, for the responsibilities of a State run by a Ministry which was not above suspicion weighed very heavily upon him.
The Cabinet was, alas, composed mainly of men with axes to grind. Of financial scandals there had been many, and more than once there had been a public outcry when Ministers had been tried as criminals and convicted of bribery, and of peculation of the public funds.
Yet as monarch his hands were tied, and perhaps no ruler in all Europe had so many sleepless nights as he.
The silence was broken by a bugle in the great courtyard below. The Palace guard were changing.
“Listen, Waldron,” he said at last in a low voice of deep earnestness after he had ascertained that the door was closed, “I have asked you here to-night because I feel that I can trust you. My father trusted your father, and I have known you ever since we were lads. I know how shrewd and painstaking you are, and what a high sense of honour you possess.”
“Your Majesty is far too flattering,” Hubert replied modestly. “I know that my dead father always held yours in the highest esteem. And you have shown towards myself a graciousness that I never expected.”