econds he was stunned--perhaps,
if he had not been his father's son, he might have been stunned only.
But he was more. When the first seconds had passed, there arose slowly
within him a sense of something like high, remote disdain. It grew in
his deep boy's eyes as he gazed directly into the pupils of the long
soft dark ones. His body felt as if it were growing taller.

"You are very clever," he said slowly. Then, after a second's pause,
he added, "I was too young to know that there was any one
so--clever--in the world."

The Lovely Person laughed, but she did not laugh easily. She spoke to
her companion.

"A grand seigneur!" she said. "As one looks at him, one half believes
it is true."

The man with the beard was looking very angry. His eyes were savage
and his dark skin reddened. Marco thought that he looked at him as if
he hated him, and was made fierce by the mere sight of him, for some
mysterious reason.

"Two days before you left Moscow," he said, "three men came to see your
father. They looked like peasants. They talked to him for more than
an hour. They brought with them a roll of parchment. Is that not
true?"

"I know nothing," said Marco.

"Before you went to Moscow, you were in Budapest. You went there from
Vienna. You were there for three months, and your father saw many
people. Some of them came in the middle of the night."

"I know nothing," said Marco.

"You have spent your life in traveling from one country to another,"
persisted the man. "You know the European languages as if you were a
courier, or the portier in a Viennese hotel. Do you not?"

Marco did not answer.

The Lovely Person began to speak to the man rapidly in Russian.

"A spy and an adventurer Stefan Loristan has always been and always
will be," she said. "We know what he is. The police in every capital
in Europe know him as a sharper and a vagabond, as well as a spy. And
yet, with all his cleverness, he does not seem to have money. What did
he do with the bribe the Maranovitch gave him for betraying what he
knew of the old fortress? The boy doesn't even suspect him. Perhaps
it's true that he knows nothing. Or perhaps it is true that he has
been so ill-treated and flogged from his babyhood that he dare not
speak. There is a cowed look in his eyes in spite of his childish
swagger. He's been both starved and beaten."

The outburst was well done. She did not look at Marco as she poured
forth her word