The quickest intelligence cannot follow another's mind beyond its own depth.
"Then the inference is that my father was the illegitimate son of the Comte d'Artois." "Afterward Charles X., of France," supplemented Colville, significantly.
"Is that the inference ?" persisted Barebone.

"I should like to know your opinion.

You must have studied the question very carefully.

Your opinion should be of some interest, though--" "Though--" echoed Colville, interrogatively, and regretted it immediately.
"Though it is impossible to say when you speak the truth and when you lie." And any who doubted that there was royal blood in Loo Barebone's veins would assuredly have been satisfied by a glance at his face at that moment; by the sound of his quiet, judicial voice; by the sudden and almost terrifying sense of power in his measuring eyes.
Colville turned away with an awkward laugh and gave his attention to the logs on the hearth.

Then suddenly he regained his readiness of speech.
"Look here, Barebone," he cried.