For one moment the King stood transfixed and astounded; a cloud of anger darkened his brows. Crumpling up the document in his hand, he was about to fling it from him in a fury. What! This mere boy and girl had baffled the authority of a king! Anon, his anger cooled--his countenance cleared. Smoothing the paper out he read its contents again,--then smiled. “Well! Humphry has something of me in him after all!” he said. “He is not entirely his mother! He has a heart,--a will, and a conscience,--all three generally lacking to sons of kings! Let me be honest with myself! If he had given way to me, I should have despised him!--‘but for Love’s sake he has opposed me; and by my soul!--I respect him!” CHAPTER XXIII THE KING’S DEFENDER Rumour, we are told, has a million tongues, and they were soon all at work, wagging out the news of the Crown Prince’s mysterious departure. Each tongue told a different story, and none of the stories tallied. No information was to be obtained at Court. There nothing was said, but that the Prince, disliking the formal ceremony of a public departure, had privately set sail in his own yacht for his projected tour round the world. Nobody believed this; and the general impression soon gained ground that the young man had fallen into disgrace with his Royal parents, and had been sent away for a time till he should recognize the enormity of his youthful indiscretions. “Sent away--you understand!” said the society gossips; “To avoid further scandal!” The Prince’s younger brothers, Rupert and Cyprian, were often plied with questions by their intimates, but knowing nothing, and truly caring less, they could give no explanation. Neither King nor Queen spoke a word on the subject; and Sir Roger de Launay, astonished and perplexed beyond measure as he was at this turn in affairs, dared not put any questions even to his friend Professor von Glauben who, as soon as the news of the Prince’s departure was known, resolutely declined to speak, so he said, “on what did not concern him.” Gradually, however, this excitement partially subsided to give place to other forms of social commotion, which beginning in trifles, swiftly expanded to larger and more serious development. The first of these was the sudden rise of a newspaper which had for many years subsisted with the greatest difficulty in opposition to the many journals governed by David Jost. It happened in this manner. Several leading articles written in favour of a Jesuit settlement in the country, had appeared constantly in Jost’s largest and most widely circulated newspaper, and the last of these ‘leaders,’ had concluded with the assertion that though his Majesty, the King, had at first refused the portion of Crown-lands needed by the Society for building, he had now ‘graciously’ re-considered the situation, and had been pleased to revoke his previous decision. Whereat, the very next morning the rival ‘daily’ had leaped into prominence by merely two headlines: