in a position to affirm."

Odo turned on him with a start. "Do I understand that you have
presumed--?"

His minister raised a deprecating hand. "Sir," said he, "the Archduke's
envoy is in Pianura."

4.2.

Odo, on his return to Pianura, had taken it for granted that de Crucis
would remain in his service.

There had been little talk between the two on the way. The one was deep
in his own wretchedness, and the other had too fine a tact to intrude on
it; but Odo felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy which was
almost a gift of divination. He was glad to have de Crucis at his side
at a moment when any other companionship had been intolerable; and in
the egotism of his misery he imagined that he could dispose as he
pleased of his friend's future.

After the little Prince's death, however, de Crucis had at once asked
permission to leave Pianura. He was perhaps not displeased by Odo's
expressions of surprise and disappointment; but they did not alter his
decision. He reminded the new Duke that he had been called to Pianura as
governor to the late heir, and that, death having cut short his task, he
had now no farther pretext for remaining.

Odo listened with a strange sense of loneliness. The responsibilities of
his new state weighed heavily on the musing speculative side of his
nature. Face to face with the sudden summons to action, with the
necessity for prompt and not too-curious choice of means and method, he
felt a stealing apathy of the will, an inclination toward the subtle
duality of judgment that had so often weakened and diffused his
energies. At such a crisis it seemed to him that, de Crucis gone, he
remained without a friend. He urged the abate to reconsider his
decision, begging him to choose a post about his person.

De Crucis shook his head.

"The offer," said he, "is more tempting to me than your Highness can
guess; but my business here is at an end, and must be taken up
elsewhere. My calling is that of a pedagogue. When I was summoned to
take charge of Prince Ferrante's education I gave up my position in the
household of Prince Bracciano not only because I believed that I could
make myself more useful in training a future sovereign than the son of a
private nobleman, but also," he added with a smile, "because I was
curious to visit a state of which your Highness had so often spoken, and
because I believed that my residence here might enable me to be of
service to your Highness. In this I w