sensitive nature was stirred to the depths by the emotion in
Sir Paul's face--emotion that all his life long he had never seen there
before. He grasped his hand--

"Father Paul," he began, but Sir Paul shook his head at the unspoken
appeal in his face and bade him be patient just a little longer and
await his letters, for he could tell him nothing.

And thus they parted; the Boy to seek in Lucerne the unveiling of his
destiny, the man to wait in Venice, a place he had shunned for
one-and-twenty years, but which was dearer to him than any other city in
the world. It was there that he had lived the climax of his love-life,
with its unutterable ecstasy--and unutterable pain.

Vasili had preceded his young master to Lucerne with the letters that
had been too precious, and of too secret a nature, to be entrusted to
the post. Who can define the sensations of the young prince as he held
in his hand the whole solution of the mystery that had haunted all his
years? He trembled--paled. What was this secret--perhaps this terrible
secret--which was to be a secret no longer?

Alone in his apartment, he opened the little packet and read the note
from the Regent, which enclosed the others, and then--he could read no
further. The few words of information that there stared him in the face
drove every other thought from his mind, every other emotion from his
heart. His father! Why hadn't he seen? Why hadn't he known? A thousand
significant memories rushed over him in the light of the startling
revelation. How blind he had been! And he sat for hours, unheeding the
flight of time, thinking only the one thought, saying over and over
again the one name, the name of his father, his own father, whom he had
loved so deeply all his life--

_Paul Verdayne!_

CHAPTER XX

At last, when he felt that he could control his scattered senses, he
turned over the letters in the packet and found his mother's. How his
boyish heart thrilled at this message from the dead!--a message that he
had waited for, and that had been waiting for him, one-and-twenty years!
The letter began:

"Once, my baby, thy father--long before he was thy father--had a
presentiment that if he became my lover my life would find a tragic end.

"Once, likewise, I told thy father, before he became my lover, that the
price we might have to pay, if we permitted ourselves to love, would be
sorrow and death! For, my baby, these are so often the terrible cost of
such a love