mbitious personality. He had become a famous orator,
a noted statesman, a man of brain as well as brawn. People were glad to
listen when he talked. He inspired them with the idea--so nearly extinct
in this day and age of the world--that life after all was very much
worth the living. He stirred languid pulses with a dormant enthusiasm.
He roused torpid brains to thought. He had ideas and had also a way of
making other people share those ideas. England was proud of Paul
Verdayne, as she had good reason to be. And he was only forty-three
years old even now. What might he not accomplish in the future for the
land to which he devoted all his talents, his tireless, well-directed
activities?

He had given himself up so thoroughly to political interests that he had
not taken time to marry. This was a great disappointment to his mother,
Lady Henrietta, who had set her heart upon welcoming a daughter-in-law
and a houseful of merry, romping grandchildren before the sun of her
life had gone down forever. It was also a secret source of
disappointment to certain younger feminine hearts as well, who in the
days of his youth, and even in the ripeness of later years, had regarded
Paul Verdayne with eyes that found him good to look upon. But the young
politician had never been a woman's man. He was chivalrous, of course,
as all well-bred Englishmen are, but he kept himself as aloof from all
society as politeness would permit, and the attack of the most
skillfully aimed glances fell harmless, even unheeded, upon his
impenetrable armor. He might have married wherever he had willed, but
Society and her fair votaries sighed and smiled in vain, and finally
decided to leave him alone, to Verdayne's infinite relief.

As for the Boy, he was always, as I have said, a mystery, always a topic
for the consideration of the gossips. Every year since he was a little
fellow six years old he had come to Verdayne Place for the summer; at
first, accompanied by his nurse, Anna, and a silver-haired servant,
curiously named Dmitry. Later the nurse had ceased to be a necessity,
and the old servant had been replaced by Vasili, a younger, but no less
devoted attendant. As the Boy grew older, he had learned to hunt and
took long rides with his then youthful host across the wide stretch of
English country that made up the Verdayne estates and those of the
neighboring gentry. Often they cruised about in distant waters, for the
young fellow from his earliest years