"Regret!" I exclaimed. "What regret can you have? Surely you were entirely right in acting as you did? The people were anxious for a just and upright ruler, and having regard to the fact that your mother plotted your assassination in so cold-blooded a manner, her overthrow is justly deserved."
"Yes, yes, I know," he answered, rather impatiently. "But it is not that—not that. One thing remains to complete my happiness, but alas!"——and he sighed heavily without finishing his sentence.
"Why speak so despondently?" I inquired, surprised. "As Naba of Mo all things are possible."
"Alas! not everything," he said, with an air of melancholy.
"Well, tell me," I urged. "Why are you so downcast?"
"I—I have lost Liola," he answered hoarsely. "Truth to tell, Scarsmere, I loved Goliba's daughter."
"She is absolutely beautiful," I admitted. "No man can deny that she is handsome enough to share your royal throne."
"Indeed she was," he said with emotion, his chin upon his breast.
"Was!" I cried. "Why do you speak thus?"
"Because she is dead!" he answered huskily. "Ah! Scars, you don't know how fondly I loved her ever since the first moment we met. I loved her better than life; better than all this honour and pomp to which I have succeeded. Yet she has been taken from me, and my life in future will be devoid of that happiness I had contemplated. True I am Naba of Mo, successor to the stool whereon a line of unconquered monarchs have sat throughout a thousand years, yet all is an empty pleasure now that my well-beloved is lost to me."