He caught himself sharply and bit his lip, forcing back the impetuous
words he had not meant to say. The silence of years still shrouded those
mysterious three weeks, and the time had not yet come when that silence
could be broken. What had he said? What possessed the Boy to-day to
cling so persistently to this hitherto forbidden subject?

"Where did you meet her, Uncle?"

"At Lucerne!"

"Lucerne!" echoed the Boy, his blue eyes growing dreamy with musing.
"That says nothing to me--nothing! and yet--you will laugh at me, I
know, but I sometimes get the most tantalizing impression that I
remember my mother. It is absurd, of course--I suppose I could not
possibly remember her--and yet there is such a haunting, vague sense of
close-clinging arms, of an intensely white and tender face bending over
me--sometimes in the radiance of day and again in the soft shadows of
night, but always, always alight with love--of kisses, soft and warm,
and yet often tearful--and of black, lustrous hair, over which there
always seems to shine a halo--a very coronet of triumphant motherhood."

Verdayne's lips moved, but no sound came from them to voice the
passionate cry in his heart, "My Queen, my Queen!"

"I suppose it is only a curious dream! It must be, of course! But it is
a very real vision to me, and I would not part with it for the world.
Uncle, do you know, I can never look upon the pictured face of a Madonna
without being forcibly reminded of this vision of my mother--the mother
I can see only in dreams!"