"Hubert is away, you know, and I have
just let the thing slide--"
"About the end of February did you notice the boy looking at all worried?"
Sir Charles thought a moment.
"Yes--I recollect--d--d worried and restless--and he is again now."
"Ah! I thought so!" said Mark Grigsby, as though he could say a good deal
more.
"Well, then--out with it, Grig," Sir Charles said impatiently.
And Captain Grigsby proceeded in his own style to weave together a chain of
coincidences which had struck him, until this final certainty. They were a
clear set of arguments, and Paul's father was convinced, too.
"You see, Tompson told you in the beginning she was Russian," Captain
Grigsby said after talking for some time, "and the rest was easy to find
out. We're not here to judge the morals of the affair, Charles; you and I
can only be thundering glad your grandson will sit on that throne all
right."
He had read in one paper--he proceeded to say--that a most difficult
political situation had been avoided by the birth of this child, as there
was no possible heir at all, and immense complications would ensue upon the
death of the present ruler--the scurrilous rag even gave a _resume_ of this
ruler's dissolute life, and a broad hint that the child could in no case be
his; but, as they pithily remarked, this added to the little prince's
welcome in Ministerial circles, where the lady was greatly beloved and
revered, and the King had only been put upon his tottering throne, and kept
there, by the fact of being her husband.
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