"Excellency," reminded Diane, "there is an explanation--"
But Ronador's pallid lips were set in lines of fierce denial.
"Philip!" appealed the girl.
"Well," said Philip looking away, "it's a tale of a candlestick."
"A candlestick!"
"And a hidden paper."
"Yes?"
Ronador seemed about to speak, thought better of it and closed his lips in a tense white line of sullenness.
Philip glanced keenly at him, and his own mouth grew a little sterner.
"Excellency," he said to Ronador, "that you may not feel impelled again to violence in the suppression of this curious fragment of family history, let me warn you that the story has been entrusted in full to Father Joda, who knew and loved your cousin. Any spectacular irrationality that you may hereafter develop in connection with Miss Westfall, will lead to its disclosure. He is pledged to that in writing."
The color died out of Ronador's face. The fire, roused by the specter he had fought this many a day, burned itself quite to ashes and left him cold and sullen. He had played and lost. And he was an older and quieter man for the losing. Whatever else lay at the bottom of his contradictory maze of dark moods and passions, he had courage and the curse of conscience. There were black memories struggling now within him.
Tregar moved quietly to Ronador's side, an act of ready loyalty not without dignity in the eyes of Philip.
"Your letter hinted something of all this," he said. "Let us be quite fair, Poynter. Ronador feared only for his little son."
"Why must we talk in riddles?" cried Diane with a flash of impatience. "Why does Ronador fear for his son? Where is the candlestick? And the paper? Who found it?"
"Carl found it," said Philip. "It was written nearly a quarter of a century ago, by one--Theodomir of Houdania."
Diane glanced in utter mystification at Ronador's ashen face--there was a great fear in his eyes--and thence to Baron Tregar.
"Excellency," she appealed, "it is all very hard to understand. Who is Theodomir? And why must his life touch mine after all these years?"
The Baron cleared his throat.
"Let me try to make it simpler," he said gravely. "Theodomir, Miss Westfall, was a lovable, willful, over-democratic young crown prince of Houdania who, many years ago, refused the responsibilities of a royal position whose pomp and pretensions he despised--quoting Buddha--and fled to America where in the course of time he married, divorced his wife and later died--incognito. He was Ronador's cousin, and his flight shifted the regency of the kingdom to Ronador's father."