"I shall appoint him sanitary inspector," said Alec, sniffing.

Stampoff laughed. Now that they were fairly committed to Alec's scheme, he was in excellent spirits. "By the patriarch! you certainly believe in yourself, and I am beginning to believe in you!" he vowed.

But his faith was rudely shaken when Alec insisted on sending his own card to Nesimir. "That is a mad thing," he protested. "He will refuse to receive you and hand you over to the guard."

"On the contrary, he will hasten to meet us. Curiosity is the most potent of human attributes. Even Presidents yield to it. At this moment, in all likelihood, he is struggling into a frock coat."

Alec was right. A portly person, wearing, indeed, a frock coat, a sash, and peg top trousers, appeared in the doorway of the presidential mansion. He also wore an expression of deep amazement. He glanced from the tall smiling youth to the diminutive General, on whom his eyes dwelt searchingly.

"Yes," said Stampoff abruptly, speaking in French, "I am Paul Stampoff, shorn of his fleece. This is the King," and he nodded to Alec.

"The King!"

"Alexis III., grandson of Ferdinand VII., and son of Michael V."

Nesimir hastily ordered a servant to close the outer door. As it happened, the President's military guard was stationed at a gate on the other side of the main courtyard, and no one could be aware of the visitor's identity, except the man who had taken Alec's card, while he, probably, was unable to read Roman script.

"Your Excellency will doubtless permit our baggage to be placed in the hall?" said Alec, using the most musical of all the Slavonic tongues with fluency.

The President, in that state of trepidation best described by the homely phrase, "You could have knocked him down with a feather," seemed to collapse utterly when he heard the stranger talking like a native.

"Certainly, your—certainly. I don't understand, of course; but I shall give directions..." he stuttered. "You have come by train, from—er—from the west? You have not breakfasted? A cup of chocolate? Ah, yes, a cup of chocolate. Then we can discuss matters. The Assembly meets at ten, and I am very busy; but I can give you half an hour, Monsieur——" he looked at the card in his hand,—"Monsieur——"

Then he gave it up. He simply dared not pronounce the name; so, with hospitable flourish, he ushered the two up a broad staircase and into a room.

While climbing the stairs he recovered sufficiently to tell the doorkeeper that the gentlemen's portmanteaus were to be brought within and no one admitted without specific permission. Once in the room he closed the door, stood with his back to it, and gasped at Stampoff with one word:

"Now!"

"As soon as you like. I am famished. I ate but little en route, because I detest German cooking," said Stampoff, on whom Alec's methods were taking effect.

"But——"

"Ah, you wonder why his Majesty should appear without ceremony? Well, he quitted Paris on Tuesday night, an hour after Prince Michael had abdicated in his favor."

"Abdicated!" wheezed the President.

"Our friend takes too much for granted," broke in Alec, smiling and unembarrassed. "My father could not vacate a throne he did not occupy. He merely resigned his claims in my favor. Kosnovia should be governed by a constitutional King, and the power to choose him now rests solely with the honorable house of which you are chief. If that is your view, I share it to the uttermost. It is reported in the press that the men who murdered King Theodore and Queen Helena have declared their allegiance to the Delgrado line. My reply is that I refuse their nomination. If I am elected King by the representatives of the people, I shall have much pleasure in hanging every officer who took part in the infamy of the Black Castle. But—it is an early hour for politics. You mentioned breakfast, Monsieur le President?"

Fat and asthmatic Sergius Nesimir was not the man to deal with a candid adventurer of this type. It occurred to him that he ought to summon help and clap the soi-disant King and his henchman into prison. But on what charge? Could any royal pretender put forth more reasonable plea? And Kosnovia is near enough to the East to render sacred the claims of hospitality.

"One moment, I beg," he stammered. "Why has your—why have you come to me? What am I to do? The Assembly——"

"The Assembly seems to favor a Republic," said Alec. "Be it so. There are certain arguments against such a course which I would be glad of an opportunity to place before members. If you introduce me, they will give me a fair hearing. Let a vote be taken at once. If it is opposed to a monarchy, I am ready to be conducted to either the railway station or the scaffold, whichever the Assembly in its wisdom may deem best fitted to national needs. If it is in my favor, I am King. What more is there to be said?"

"What, indeed?" growled Stampoff. "Why so much talk? Let us eat!"

Poor Nesimir! He had the unhappy history of his country at his fingers' ends, and never before had Delgrado or Obrenovitch striven for kingship in this kid-glove fashion.

"Breakfast shall be served instantly," he said, trying vainly to imitate the cool demeanor of his guests. "But—you will appreciate the difficulties of my position. I must consult with the ministers."

"I hope I may call your Excellency a friend," said Alec, "and I shall be ever ready to accept your Excellency's counsel; but on this exceptional occasion I venture to advise you. Let none know I am here. In the present disturbed condition of affairs there must be almost as many hidden forces existing in Delgratz as there are men in the Cabinet. Why permit them to fret and fume when you alone have power to control them? I promise faithfully to abide by the decision of the Assembly. Should it favor me, your position is consolidated; should it prove adverse to my cause, you still remain the chief man in the State, since the world will realize that it was to you, and you only, I submitted in the first instance."

"By all the saints, that is well put!" cried Stampoff. "Now, Sergius, my lamb, a really good omelet, something grilled, and a bottle of sound Karlowitz—none of your Danube water for me!"

The President surrendered at discretion. Alec's appeal to his self importance was irresistible. He was excited, elated, frightened; but happily he was strong enough to perceive that a chance of obtaining distinction was within his grasp, and he clutched at it, though with palsied hands.

So it came to pass that when the hundred and fifty members of the National Assembly gathered in the great hall of the convention, none there knew why a tall, pleasant faced young man should be sitting in the President's private room, and apparently not caring a jot who came or went during the half-hour's lobbying and retailing of political gossip that preceded the formal opening of the sitting.

But there was an awkward moment when Nesimir, pale and shaken, entered the chamber through the folding doors at the back of the presidential dais.

"Silence for his Excellency the President!" shouted a loud voiced usher, and all men looked up in wonder when they discovered that the youthful stranger was standing by the President's side. The session was to be a secret one. Press and public were excluded. Who, then—

"Gentleman," said Sergius Nesimir, and he spoke with the slowness of ill repressed agitation, "I have a momentous announcement to make. This honorable house has almost committed itself to the republican form of Government——"



"Definitely!" cried a voice.

"No, no!" this from a Senator.

The President lifted a hand. In other circumstances, the interruptions would have provoked rival storms of agreement and dissent from the many groups into which the Assembly was split up; but now there was an electric feeling in the air that their trusted chief would not broach this grave question so suddenly without good cause. And—who was his companion? Why did he occupy the dais?

"I ask for silence," said Nesimir. "The fortunes of Kosnovia tremble in the balance. You will be given ample time for discussion; but hear me first. I have said that the republican idea has been mooted in all seriousness. We, in common with the rest of humanity, have been horror stricken by recent events in our beloved land. Our reigning dynasty has been blotted out of existence. There is no heir of the Obrenovitch line. Were we, the representatives of the people, to declare in favor of a King, we should naturally turn to the other royal house of our own blood. We should send for a Delgrado. Gentlemen, here stands Alexis Delgrado——"

He could go no further. A yell of sheer amazement came from all parts of the crowded chamber. Ministers, Senators, Representatives, joined in that bewildered roar. Those who were sitting rose; those in the back benches stood on the seats in order to gaze over the heads in front. Men shouted and glared and turned to shout again at one another; but through all the turmoil Alec faced them, smiling and imperturbable, and, at what he judged to be the right moment—for that volcanic outburst must be given time to exhaust itself—he placed his one hand on the President's shoulder and with the other signaled his desire to be heard.

Again he placed implicit confidence in the all powerful element of curiosity. He knew full well that these emotional Serbs could not hear his name unmoved, while the extraordinary racial difference between himself and every other man in the Assembly must have made a strong appeal to their dramatic instincts. And again was he justified; for the mere expression of his wish to address them was obeyed by an instant hushing of the storm.

"My fellow countrymen," he began, "you whom I expect to count among my friends ere this day is out——"

Another wave of sound ran through the hall. Men still wondered; but their hearts were beating high, and a new note had come into their voices. He was speaking their own language, speaking it as one to the manner born, speaking it as no Austrian could ever speak it, since harsh, dominant German can never reproduce the full Slavonic resonance. Alec, but yesterday Joan's typical idler, had fathomed some uncharted deep in the mysterious art of swaying his fellow men. He realized at once that this rumble of astonishment was the very best thing that could have happened. He waited just long enough for the sympathetic murmur to merge into nods and whisperings, then he continued:

"It is true that I am here as a Delgrado. I come as a candidate, not a claimant. It rests with you whether I shall remain among you as Alexis III., King of Kosnovia, or go back to my father and tell him that our people are anxious to try a new form of Government. Of course," and here Alec beamed on them most affably, "there are other alternatives. You may elect to put me in jail, or throw me into the Danube, or swing me from a gibbet as a warning to all would-be monarchs and other malefactors. But there is one thing you cannot do. You can never persuade me to wade to a throne through the blood of innocent people! And that is why I am here, and not in the company of the wretched conspirators now skulking behind the walls of the Schwarzburg."

Then a hurricane of cheers made the windows rattle, and a deputy from the Shumadia, "the heart of Kosnovia," a bigchested, deep voiced forester, sent forth a trumpet shout that reached every ear:

"Hola! That's a King! Look at him!"

From that instant Alec was as surely King of Kosnovia as the German Emperor is King of Prussia. Of course, he had to talk till he was hoarse, and wring strong hands till he was weary, and Stampoff had to make more than one gruff speech, and eloquent Senators and Deputies had to proclaim the inviolate nature of the new constitution, and Alec had to sign it amid a scene of riotous enthusiasm. But these things were the aftermath of a harvest reaped by half a dozen sentences. The Shumadia man's simple phrases became a formula. Men laughed and said:

"Hola! That's a King! Look at him!"

In time it reached the streets. The people took it up as a popular catchword. It whirled through all Kosnovia. Those who had never seen Alec, nor heard of him before they were told he was King, adopted it as a token of their belief that the nation had at last obtained a ruler who surpassed all other Kings.

But that was to come later. While Alec was listening to the plaudits that proclaimed his triumph, Stampoff growled at him from behind the half-closed door:

"Gods! You've done it! And without a blow! Never was Kingdom won so easily. God bless your Majesty! May you live long and reign worthily!"

Good wishes these; but in them was the germ of an abiding canker. What would Joan say? He had taken a sleeping car ticket from Paris and had stepped into his patrimony with as little anxiety or delay as would herald a royal succession in the oldest and most firmly established monarchy in Europe. What of the goddess with the great gray eyes, clear and piercing, who knew all the thoughts of men's hearts and the secrets of their souls? What of her warning that she would drive her chosen ones by strange paths through doubt and need and danger and battle? Which of these had he encountered, beyond the vanished phantoms of idle hours passed in the cozy comfort of the Orient Express? "Never was kingdom won so easily!"

Well meant; but it rankled. That ominous line of Vergil's came to his mind. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes (I fear the Greeks even bringing gifts). Truly the Greeks were come speedily, carrying in full measure the gifts of loyalty and dominion. Yet he feared them. A whiff of peril, pitfalls to be leaped, some days or weeks of dire uncertainty, men to be won, and factions placated, any or all of these might have appeased the jealous gods. But this instant success would shock Olympus. It cried for contrast by its very flight to the pinnacle.

None suspected this mood in the chosen King. He charmed these volatile and romantic Serbs by his naturalness. He seemed to take it so thoroughly for granted that he was the one man living who could rule them according to their aspirations, that they adopted the notion without reserve. The morning passed in a blaze of enthusiasm. Alec, outwardly calm and hale fellow with all who came in contact with him, was really in a state of waking trance. His brain throbbed with ideas, words that he had never conned flowed from his lips. Thus, when asked to sign the constitution, he wrote "Alexis, Rex," with a firm hand, and then looked round on the circle of intent faces.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I hereby pledge myself to our land. When I am dead, if my successor shows signs of faltering, make my skin into a drumhead for the cause of Kosnovia!"

At the moment he really did not know that this was borrowed thunder, and assuredly the Kosnovians did not care. Already his utterances were being retailed with gusto. Before night, every adult inhabitant of Delgratz was likening their marvelous King, fallen from the skies, to a drum that should summon the Serbs to found the Empire of their dreams.

He was asked if he would not order the Seventh Regiment to evacuate the Black Castle so that he might take up his quarters there.

"There is no hurry," he said. "The place needs cleaning."

A review of the troops stationed in other parts of the capital was arranged for the afternoon in the beautiful park that crowns the promontory formed by the two rivers, and it was suggested that he should drive thither in the President's carriage.

"I would prefer to ride," said he. "Then the people and I can see one another."

A number of horses were brought from the late King's stables and Alec selected a white Arab stallion that seemed to have mettle and be up to weight. Soldiers and civilians exchanged underlooks at the choice. Selim was the last horse ridden by the ill fated Theodore, and, after the manner of Arabs, he had stumbled on the level roadway and the royal equestrian was thrown.

During the procession, while passing through the densely packed Wassina-st., Selim stumbled again and was promptly pulled back almost on his haunches. At that very instant a revolver was fired from the crowd and a bullet flattened itself on the opposite wall. The would-be assassin was seized instantly, a hundred hands were ready to tear him to shreds, when the King's white horse suddenly pranced into the midst of the press. Grasping the man by the neck, Alec drew him free by main force.

"Kill him!" yelled the mob.

"No," cried Alec, "we will put him in the recruits' squad and teach him how to shoot!"

Throughout a long day he displayed a whole hearted abandonment to the joy of finding himself accepted by the people as their ruler that did more than a year's session of the Assembly to endear him to them; but the seal of national approval was conferred by his action next day, when news came that Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir was a prisoner at Semlin!

Naturally, the telegraph wires had thrilled Europe during every hour after ten o'clock on Thursday morning, but the thrills felt in Germany, Russia, and Turkey were supplemented by agonized squirming on the part of official Austria. That an upstart, a masquerader, a mountebank of a King, should actually have traversed Austria from west to east, without ever a soul cased in uniform knowing anything about him, was ill to endure, and the minions of Kosnovia's truculent neighbor swore mighty oaths that no bottle holder from Paris or elsewhere should be allowed to follow. So Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir was watched from Passau to Maria Theresiopel, and telegrams flew over the face of the land, and Alec's British ally was hauled from the train at Semlin soon after dawn Friday.

Captain Drakovitch, anxious to atone for his prying of the previous day, brought circumstantial details to his Majesty Alexis III., who was breakfasting with Nesimir, Stampoff, and Ministers of State. There could be no doubting Beaumanoir's identity, since his baggage was on the train, and Drakovitch had made sure of his facts before hurrying to the President's house.

"Has Austria any right to arrest a British subject merely because he wishes to enter Kosnovia?" asked Alec, looking round at the assembled gray-heads.

"None whatever," said Nesimir.

"It is an outrage," puffed the War Minister.

"She would not dare act in that way on any other frontier!" cried he of the Interior.

"What, then, is to be done?" demanded the King.

"Make the most emphatic protest to Vienna," came the chorus.

"Through the usual diplomatic channels?"

"Yes—of course."

"But that means leaving my friend in prison for an indefinite period."

Eloquent shrugs expressed complete agreement.

"Has it been the habit of Kosnovia to accept tamely such treatment at the hands of Austria?" inquired Alec, looking at the President.

"I fear so, your Majesty. We are small and feeble; she is mighty in size and armament."

"So was Goliath, yet David slew him with a pebble," said Alec, rising. "Come, Captain Drakovitch, you and I will call on the Austrian Ambassador. Stampoff, will you kindly arrange that a regiment of cavalry and six guns shall parade outside the station in half an hour's time? You might also ask the railway people to provide the necessary transport, though I hardly expect it will be needed. Still, we ought to make a show, just for practice."

Several faces at the table blanched.

"What does your Majesty mean by these preparations?" asked Nesimir.

"Preparations—for what? Surely we can inspect our own troops and test our own railway accommodation," laughed Alec. "As for the Austrian Ambassador, I intend to make an emphatic protest through the usual diplomatic channel. Isn't that what you all agreed to?"

He went out, followed by Drakovitch. In five minutes they were clattering through the streets accompanied by a small escort, which Alec would have dispensed with if it was not absolutely needed to clear a passage when once Delgratz knew that the King was abroad.

Neither the Austrian nor Russian representative had recognized the new regime as yet. Each was waiting to see how the other would act; so Baron von Rothstein viewed with mixed feelings the arrival of his royal visitor. But he met him with all ceremony, and began to say that instructions might reach him from Vienna at any moment to pay an official call.

"Quite correct, Herr Baron," said Alec cheerfully. "I am a novice at this game; but I fully understand that you act for your Government and not for yourself. That fact renders easy the favor I have to ask."

"Anything that lies in my power, your Majesty——"

"Oh, this is a simple matter. A friend of mine, Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir, who was coming here from Paris to visit me, was arrested at Semlin this morning. There is, or can be, no charge against him. Some of your zealous agents have blundered, that is all. Now, I want you to go to Semlin in a special train I will provide and bring his Lordship here before——" Alec looked at his watch—"It is now nine—shall we say?—by eleven o'clock sharp."

Von Rothstein was startled, and he showed it. "But this is the first I have heard of it," he said.

"Exactly. That is why I came in person to tell you."

"I fear I cannot interfere, your Majesty."

"Is that so? Why, then, Herr Baron, are you Minister for Austria at Delgratz?"

"I mean that this matter is not within my province."

"Surely it must be. I cannot allow my friends to be collared by Austrian police for no reason whatsoever. This passport question concerns Kosnovia, not Austria. The action of the Semlin authorities is one of brigandage. It can be adjusted amicably by you, Herr von Rothstein. Do you refuse?"

"I fear I cannot do what you desire, your Majesty."

"Ah! That is a pity! In that event, I must go to Semlin myself and liberate Lord Adalbert."

"I don't quite understand——"

"Is my German so poor, then?" laughed Alec.

"I mean, of course——"

"You think I am bluffing. Do you know the word? It is American for a pretense that is not backed by action. I intend nothing of the kind. Either you or I must start for Semlin forthwith. If I go, I take with me a bodyguard sufficiently strong to insure my friend's freedom. I am not declaring war against Austria. If any jack in office in Kosnovia acts like these Semlin policemen, and a Kosnovian official refuses to put matters straight, by all means let Austria teach the offenders a sharp lesson. She will have my complete approval, as I hope I have yours on the present occasion."

"But, your Majesty, such action on your part does really amount to a declaration of war!"

"Ridiculous! Austria seizes an inoffensive British gentleman merely because he travels from Paris to Delgratz, I appeal to you, the Austrian minister, to go and release him, and you refuse; yet you tell me I am making war on your country if I rescue him. The notion is preposterous! At any rate, it can be argued later. I have sufficient cavalry and guns assembled near the station, and I hope to be in Semlin in twenty minutes. Good morning, Baron."

"Your Majesty, I implore you to forego this rash enterprise."

"It is you or I for it!"

"Let me telegraph."

"Useless. That spells delay. You or I must go to Semlin—now! Which is it to be?"

The Austrian diplomat, pallid and bewildered, yet had the wit to believe that this quiet voiced young man meant every word he said. He reasoned quickly that the freeing of a pestiferous Englishman at Semlin could have no possible effect on Austria's subsequent action. She might please herself whether or not the threatened invasion of her territory should be deemed a cause of war, while to yield for the hour robbed this extraordinary adventurer of the prestige that would accrue from his bold act.

"I will go, your Majesty," said he, after a fateful pause.

"Good! Permit me to congratulate you on a wise decision," said Alec. "I shall wait your return in patience until eleven."

"And then?"

"Oh, then—I follow you, of course."

Baron von Rothstein thought silence was best. He drove to the station, and did not fail to note the military preparations. His special quitted Delgratz at nine-twenty A.M. At ten-forty A.M. it came back and Alec met him and Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir on the platform.

"Sorry you were held up, old chap," was the King's greeting. "Some of these frontier police are fearful asses; but Herr von Rothstein rushed off the instant he heard of your predicament, and here you are, only five hours late after all."

"Wouldn't have missed it for a pony, dear boy," grinned Beaumanoir. "There was a deuce of a shindy when three fat johnnies tried to pull me out of my compartment. I told 'em I didn't give a tinker's continental for their bally frontier, and then the band played. I slung one joker through the window. Good job it was open, or he might have been guillotined, eh, what?"

"No one was injured, I hope."

"Another fellow said I bent his ribs; but they sprang all right under the vet's thumb. Tell me, why does our baronial friend look so vinegary? He chattered like a magpie in the police bureau, or whatever it is called, at Semlin."

"Lord Adalbert wishes me to explain that a disagreeable incident had ended happily," said Alec to von Rothstein.

"I am not sure that it has ended, your Majesty," was the grim reply.

"Well, then, shall we say that it has taken a satisfactory turn? You see, my dear Baron, I am quite a young King, and I shall commit many blunders before I learn the usages of diplomacy. But I mean well, and that goes a long way,—much farther than Semlin, even beyond Vienna."



CHAPTER V

FELIX SURMOUNTS A DIFFICULTY

Count Julius Marulitch and his friend Constantine Beliani, the one savagely impatient, the other moody and preoccupied, sprawled listlessly in Marulitch's flat in the Avenue Victor Hugo, and, though it was evening, each was reading "The Matin." That is to say, each was pretending to read; but their thoughts did not follow the printed words. Alexis III. had reigned only ten days, yet the most enterprising of the Paris newspapers was already making a feature of a column headed: "Our dear Alec, day by day." It ought to be an interesting record to these two men, yet it evidently was not one-tenth so humorous as "The Matin" believed, since there was a deep frown on both faces.

At last Marulitch flung the paper aside with an angry snarl.

"Ah, bah!" he growled. "May the devil fly away with our dear Alec and his doings day by day! A nice pair of fools we made of ourselves when we pitchforked him into power!"

"Patience, my friend, patience!" said the Greek. "Everything comes to him who waits, and Alec will fall far when his luck changes. It may be to-morrow, or next week; but he must experience a reverse. He is like a gambler at Monte Carlo who stakes maximums just because the table is running favorably."

"Fish!" snorted Marulitch. "What else would a gambler do?"

"What indeed?" agreed Beliani, though a far less alert intelligence than Marulitch's might have known that he was annoyed. The pink and white Julius, whom his friends had nicknamed "le beau Comte," did not fail to catch the contemptuous note of that purred answer; he sprang up from his chair, ransacked a cupboard, and threw on the table a box of those priceless cigarettes, the produce of a single southwesterly hillside at Salonica, that are manufactured solely for the Sultan of Turkey.

"There, smoke, my Constantine," he laughed harshly. "Why should we quarrel? We were idiots. Let us, then, admit it."

"Were we?"

"Can you deny it? We arranged the first move beautifully. With Theodore out of the way——"

The Greek turned his head swiftly and looked at the door. Marulitch lowered his voice.

"No need to refer to Theodore, you will say? How can one avoid it? His death was the cornerstone of the edifice. If only that senile uncle of mine had become King the path would be clear for the final coup before the year was out. And now where are we? What purpose do we serve by self delusion? Each day's newspaper bears witness to our folly. Alec carries the Assembly by storm; Alec captures a would-be assassin; Alec flouts Austria; Alec disbands the Seventh Regiment and hands its officers to the police; Alec attends the funeral of Theodore and Helena, and takes over their servants and debts; Alec tells the Sultan that he exists in Europe only on sufferance; Alec draws a map of Kosnovia and decorates it with railways; Alec bathes in the Danube at six, breakfasts at seven, attends a christening at eight, a wedding at nine, a review at ten, a memorial service in the cathedral at eleven, lunches at twelve, receives provincial deputations at one, inaugurates the Delgratz Polo Club at two and the Danubian Rowing Club at three,—Alec round the clock, and all Europe agape to know what next he will be up to—and you and I here, unknown, unrecorded,—you and I, the brains, the eyes, the organizers of the whole affair! Oh, it makes me sick when I remember how I stood like a stuck pig in old Delgrado's flat and let the son jump in and snatch from the father's hands the scepter I had purchased so dearly!"

The Greek rose languidly, strolled to the door, and threw it open. A page boy was in the lobby, and it was easy to see by his innocent face that his presence there was inspired by no more sinister motive than to deliver a newspaper.

Beliani took it, closed the door, listened a moment, and unfolded the damp sheet. He glanced at its foreign news.

"'Le Soir' gives prominence to a rumor that King Alexis will marry a Montenegrin Princess," he murmured composedly.

"Mirabel, of course?"

"She is unnamed."

"That's it. I know, I know! He will marry Mirabel. By Heaven! if he does, I'll shoot him myself!"

"The trial of the regicides is fixed for June," went on Beliani, wholly unmoved by Marulitch's vehemence. "Now, the vital question is, How far can Stampoff be relied on?"

"How does our reliance on Stampoff concern Mirabel?"

"I am not thinking of Mirabel, but of Julius and Constantine. If Stampoff tells our young Bayard everything, Delgratz is no place for you and me, my veteran."

Marulitch, though trembling with passion, could not fail to see that the Greek was remarkably nonchalant for one who had witnessed the utter collapse of ten years of work and expenditure.

"Are we going there?" he managed to ask without a curse.

"Soon, quite soon, provided Stampoff keeps a still tongue."

"But why? To grace the coronation by our presence?"

"It may be. Remember, if you please, that we are Alec's best friends. We gave him his chance. I offered to finance him; did finance Stampoff in fact. We are unknown personally to the officers of the Seventh. That was wise, Julius, far-seeing, on my part. Oh, yes, we must go to Delgratz. Delgratz is the nerve center now."

"You are keeping something from me."

"On my honor, no. But you sneered at my parable of the successful gambler, whereas I believe in it implicitly. I have seen that type of fool backing the red, staking his six thousand francs on every coup, and have watched a run of twelve, thirteen, seventeen, twenty-one; but the smash came at last."

"What matter? A man who wins twenty times can well afford to lose once."

"I said a gambler, not a financier," smiled Beliani. "But let it pass. I thought you told me there was a girl here in Paris——"

"So there is, a beauty too; but Alec has meanwhile become a King."

"A somewhat peculiar King. He has borrowed his regal notions from America rather than Kosnovia, Julius. He would laugh at any claim of divine right. One of these days you will find him chaffing the Hohenzollerns, and that is dangerous jesting in the Balkans. If he loves a girl in Paris, he will not marry your Mirabel. I fancy I have taken his measure. If I am right, he is far too honest to occupy the throne of Kosnovia."

"Grand Dieu! the country is pining for honest government. Even you will grant that."

"Even I, as you say; but I should be wrong. If I have an ax to grind, so has the other fellow. Kosnovia is in the East, and the East loves deceit. Alec has dazzled the people for a few days. Wait till he begins to sweep the bureaus free of well paid sinecurists. Wait till he finds out how the money is spent that the Assembly votes for railways, education, forestry, and the like. Wait till he reduces the staff of the army and the secretaries. I know Delgratz and Kosnovia, and he does not. He will win the people, it is true; but he will alienate the men who can twist the people this way and that to suit their own purposes. Before a month is out he will be wrangling with the Assembly. See if I am not a prophet. Oh, yes, Julius, you and I must go to Delgratz. No hurry; slow but sure. I'll break the journey at Vienna. We must sound Stampoff too. But before I go, I should like to be sure that the girl has gone there."

"The artist girl to Delgratz!"

Julius was bitter and skeptical; but he reposed such confidence in Beliani's judgment that he choked his doubts. "Yes. Can it be managed?"

Le beau Comte leered, and the satyr grin was highly expressive. It seemed to show the man's real nature. In repose his face was insipid; now for an instant he resembled the god Pan.

"You called Alec a Bayard just now. Not a bad title for him. He has that kind of repute among his friends. Perhaps the girl is built on the same lines, and we don't want to send a pretty saint to Delgratz merely to inspire him to fresh efforts."

The Greek inhaled a deep breath of the aromatic smoke. "You'll be an average sort of King, Julius; but you are not a philosopher," said he thoughtfully. "I tell you we are safer than ever if we can bring him and the girl together. He will marry her, you short sighted one—marry her, and thus alienate every Slav in the Balkans. I have turned this thing in my mind constantly since I recovered from the first shock of his achievement, and I am fairly certain of my ground. Mark you, Princess Mirabel of Montenegro will be reported to-morrow as out of the running. If that is so, you will begin to believe me and stop clawing your hair and injuring your fine complexion by scowling."

Next morning's "Matin" announced that King Alexis was greatly annoyed by the mischievous and utterly unfounded canard that bracketed his name with that of a woman he had never seen. Count Julius read, and made a hasty toilet. Beliani and he had laid their plans overnight, and he lost no time in opening the new campaign.

It was a difficult and delicate task he had undertaken. Paris, big in many respects, is small in its society, which, because of its well marked limits, makes a noise in the world quite incommensurate with its importance; whereas London, close neighbor and rival, contains a dozen definite circles that seldom overlap. The woman Julius had seen with Alec in the Louvre was not on Princess Michael's visiting list, of that he had no manner of doubt. Therefore, from his point of view, the only possible solution of their apparent friendship would prove to be something underhanded and clandestine, an affair of secret meetings, and letters signed in initials, and a tacit agreement to move unhindered in different orbits.

Being of the nature of dogs and aboriginal trackers, Marulitch made straight for the Louvre. There he had quitted the trail, and there must he pick it up again. But the hunt demanded the utmost wariness. If he startled the quarry, he might fail at the outset, and, supposing his talking was successful, both he and Beliani must still beware of a King's vengeance if their project miscarried.

Neither man had the slightest belief in Alec's innate nobility of character. Beliani likened him to Bayard, it is true, and Marulitch had scoffingly adopted the simile; but that was because each thought Bayard not admirable, but a fool. The somber history of the Kosnovian monarchy, a record of crass stupidity made lurid at times by a lightning gleam of passion, justified the belief that Alexis would follow the path that led Theodore, and Ferdinand, and Ivan, and Milosch to their ruin. Each of these rulers began to reign under favorable auspices, yet each succumbed to the siren's spell, and there was no reason at all, according to such reckoning, why the handsome and impulsive Alexis should escape. That a pretty Parisienne who was also an artist should fail to offer herself as a willing bait did not enter at all into the calculation.

"Be suave, spend money, and keep in the background," said the Greek.

Julius entered the Grande Galerie prepared to apply these instructions through the medium of his own subtle wit. At the outset, luck favored him. Somehow, it is always easier to do evil than good, and the longevity of evil is notorious, whereas the short lived existence of good would horrify an insurance agent.

Joan was not present; but Felix Poluski was preparing a canvas for his twenty-seventh copy of the famous Murillo. Two of his "Immaculate Conceptions" were in private collections; one had been sold to a South American millionaire as the Spanish artist's own duplicate of the picture, though Poluski was unaware of the fraud; and twenty-three adorned the high altars of various continental churches, where they edified multitudes happily ignorant of the irreverent conditions under which the cheery souled anarchist hunchback droned his snatches of song and extracted from a few tubes of paint some glimpse of heaven, and rays of sunlight, and hints of divine love and divine maternity.

The crooked little Pole's genius and character were alike unknown to Count Julius. He saw only a quaintly artistic personage who might possibly be acquainted with such a remarkable looking habitue of the gallery as Joan. Instead, therefore, of appealing to one of the officials, he approached Poluski, and the two exchanged greetings with the politeness that Paris quickly teaches to those who dwell within her gates.

"You work in this gallery most days, monsieur?" said Julius.

"But yes, monsieur," said Felix.

"About a fortnight ago, monsieur," explained Marulitch, "I happened to be here at this hour, and I noticed a young lady copying one of the pictures on the opposite wall. Can you tell me who she was?"

"Can you tell me which picture she was copying?" said Poluski.

"I am not sure; this one, I think," and Julius pointed to "The Fortune Teller."

"Ah! Describe her, monsieur."

"She was tall, elegant, charming in manner and appearance."

Poluski appeared to reflect. "The vision sounds entrancing, monsieur," he said; "but that sort of girl doesn't usually earn her crusts by daubing canvas in the Louvre at so much a square foot."

"Yet I saw her, without a doubt. She was not alone that morning. In fact, a friend of mine was with her."

Poluski turned to his easel. He was in no mind to discuss Joan with this inquiring dandy.

"That simplifies your search, monsieur," said he carelessly. "All that is necessary is to go to your friend."

"I cannot. He is not in Paris."

"Where is he?"

"Far enough away to render it impossible that he should solve my dilemma to-day. And the thing is urgent. I have a commission to offer, a good one. If you help, you will be doing the young lady a turn—and yourself, too, perhaps."

"Kindly explain, monsieur."

"I mean that I will gladly pay for any information."

"How much? Five, ten francs, a louis?"

The Pole's sarcasm was not to be mistaken. Julius was warned and drew back hurriedly.

"I really beg your pardon," he said; "but I am so anxious to carry out my undertaking that I have expressed myself awkwardly, and I see now that you are misinterpreting my motives. Let me speak quite candidly. I have no desire to meet the lady in person. An art connoisseur, who admires her work, wishes to send her to a cathedral in a distant city to copy a painting. He will pay well. He offers traveling expenses, hotel bill, and five thousand francs. The picture is not a large one, and the work easy, a Byzantine study of Saint Peter, I believe. If you tell me, monsieur, that you can arrange the matter, I shall be pleased to leave it entirely in your hands."

"Since when did Alec become a connoisseur?" demanded Poluski, grinning.

Marulitch was startled; but he smiled with a ready self possession that did him credit. "It was in Monsieur Delgrado's company I saw the fair unknown," he admitted; "but this affair does not rest with him. It is genuine, absolutely."

"Nevertheless, this Byzantine Saint Peter hangs in Delgratz, I suppose?"

"I—I think so."

"Five thousand francs, you said, and expenses. Not bad. I'm a pretty good hand myself. Will I do?"

The Pole was enjoying the stupid little plot; for it could wear no other guise to him, and Count Julius was mortified by the knowledge that he had blundered egregiously at the first step in the negotiation. What would Beliani say? This wizened elf of a man had seen clear through their precious scheme in an instant, and, worst of all, it had not advanced an inch. Julius made a virtue of necessity, and placed all his cards on the table.

"I want you to credit my statements," he said emphatically. "This proposal is quite straightforward. My principal is prepared to pay half the money down before the lady leaves Paris, and the balance when the picture is delivered. Further, he will bear the expenses of any one who accompanies her,—a relative, or a friend, such as yourself, for instance. I don't figure in the matter at all. I am a mere go-between, and if you think otherwise you are utterly mistaken."

Felix began to whistle softly between his teeth, and the action annoyed Julius so greatly that he decided to try a new line.

"I seem to have amused you by my sincerity, monsieur!" he snapped. "Pray forget that I have troubled you——"

"But why, my paragon? Que diable! one does not spurn five thousand francs like that! I hum or whistle when I am thinking, and just now I am wondering how this business can be arranged. Who is your client?"

"Who is yours?" retorted Julius.

"She exists, at any rate."

"So does the other."

"Well, then, let us meet to-morrow——"

"But time is all important."

"There can't be such a mortal hurry, seeing that Saint Peter has hung so long undisturbed in Delgratz," said Felix dryly. "Moreover, it will clear the air if I tell you that the lady is not in Paris, so I cannot possibly give you her answer before to-morrow morning."

"How can I be sure that she is the person actually intended for this commission?"

"There won't be the least doubt about it when King Alexis III. sets eyes on her."

Julius was certainly not himself that day. His pink face grew crimson with amazement. "If you tell her that you will defeat my friend's object in sending her to Delgratz!" he blurted out.

"Eh, what are you saying? What, then, becomes of that poor Saint Peter?"

"Exactly. She is going there to copy it, not to philander with Alec."

Poluski screwed his eyes up until he was peering at Julius's excited features as if endeavoring to catch some transient color effect. "Frankly, you puzzle me," he said after a pause; "but come again to-morrow. And no tricks, no spying or that sort of thing! I am the wrong man for it. If you doubt me, ask some one who has heard of Felix Poluski. You see, Count Julius Marulitch, I am far more open than you. I knew you all the time, and as to your motives, I can guess a good deal that I don't actually know. Still, there is nothing positively dishonest about a Byzantine Saint Peter. It is not art, but five thousand francs sounds like business. Half the cash down, you said; anything by way of preliminary expenses?"

"Meaning?"

"Say, one per cent., fifty francs. Otherwise, I must paint all day and trust to the post—the least eloquent of ambassadors."

"Oh, as to that," and Julius produced a hundred-franc note from his pocketbook.

The Pole accepted it gravely. "I go instantly, monsieur," he said. He began to fold his easel and put away his brushes and colors. Once he glanced up at the rapt Madonna.

"Au 'voir, ma belle," he murmured. "This affair of Saint Peter must be arranged. It presses. They change Kings speedily in Delgratz nowadays, and their taste in saints may follow suit. But, courage! I shall return, and who knows what will come of this excursion into the forgotten realm of Byzantium?"

Count Marulitch, of course, had not counted on one who was a complete stranger not only recognizing him but stripping the pretense so thoroughly of the artistic commission offered to Alec's fair companion of that memorable morning. He must put the best face on his blunder when discussing it with Beliani, and he promised himself a quite definite understanding with Poluski ere another sou left his pocket.

Meanwhile, who was Poluski? That question, at least, could be answered easily. One clue might lead to another. To-morrow, when they met, it might be his turn to astonish the warped little Pole.

Felix, feeling that he had spoiled the Egyptians excellently well, hobbled off to his favorite cafe. Early as the hour was, various cronies were there already, sipping their morning refreshments; but he passed them with a nod and made for the fat proprietress throned behind a high desk. When she caught sight of him, a certain air of firmness seemed to struggle with sympathy for possession of her bulging features, and she hastily thumbed a small account book taken from beneath a pile of waiter's dockets.

"How much, madame?" asked Felix, who had missed none of this.

"Twenty-seven seventy-five," she said severely.

"Can one make it thirty, mignonne?"

"Thirty! Tell me, then, how market bills are to be met when one is owed these thirties?"

"Dear angel, Providence has decided that you shall deal with such problems."

"Well, well, no more, not a centime beyond the thirty!"

"Monstrous, yet all heart!" murmured Felix. He struck an attitude, and sang with exquisite feeling the opening bars of the Jewel Song from "Faust." As applied to the earthly tabernacle of madame's generous soul, the effect of that impassioned address was ludicrous. But Felix recked little of that. He threw the hundred-franc note on the counter.

"There, ma petite, be rewarded for your trust," he cried. "Now give me the railway timetable; for I have far to go ere I return, when you and I shall crack a bottle of Clos Vosgeot with our dinner."

Madame, who had not betrayed the least embarrassment when she and her cafe were apostrophized in Gounod's impassioned strains, was utterly bewildered by Poluski's wealth. Not once in many years had he owned so much at one time, since he always drew small sums on account of his pictures and kept himself going hand-to-mouth fashion. But here was Felix intent on the timetable and sweeping seventy-two francs twenty-five centimes of change into his pocket without troubling to count a coin.

"You have found a mad Englishman, I suppose?" tittered madame.

"Better, far better, ma cherie; I have met a man who would be a King!" He hurried out, climbed into a passing omnibus, and descended at the Gare de Lyon.

Joan was just leaving the pretty hotel at Barbizon, meaning to put in some hours of work after a distracted morning, when Felix emerged from the interior of a ramshackle cab that had carried him from Melun to the edge of the forest. Now, a cab drive of several miles, plus a journey from Paris, was a sufficiently rare event in Poluski's life to make Joan stare. His unexpected appearance chimed so oddly with her own disturbed thoughts that she paled.

"Felix," she cried, "have you brought ill news?"

"Of whom, chere mademoiselle?" he demanded.

"Of—of any one?"

"Alec still reigns, if that is what you mean."

"But he has sent you?"

"What, do I look like an envoy?" He laughed. "Well, well, ma belle, there is some truth in that. I come in behalf of one before whom even Kings must bow; I represent Saint Peter! But even an apostolic dynamitard must eat. I am starving, having sacrificed my luncheon to my love of you. Commend me, then, to some deft handed waiter, and let hunger and curiosity be sated at the same time."

Joan knew that Poluski would choose his own way of explaining his presence. The hour for luncheon was long past; but she hurried to the empty dining room and was able to secure some soup and a cold chicken. Felix eyed the bird distrustfully.

"Although I am here in behalf of Saint Peter, there is no sense in asking me to chew the wretched fowl that proclaimed his downfall," he muttered.

"Oh, Felix dear, please do tell me what has happened!" said Joan, clasping her hands in real distress. "I received a letter from Alec this morning. It was sent to me from my lodgings, and, what between that and the extraordinary things in the newspapers, I think I am bewitched. Now I am sure that you too have heard from him. Is it a telegram?"

"Yes," he said, "a message sent without wires; it came by one of those underground currents that convulse an unconscious world, sometimes agonizing mountains, at others perplexing a simple maid like yourself. You see, Joan, all things conspire to draw you to Delgratz."

"I am not going!" she vowed, thereby giving Poluski the exact information he needed; for his nimble brain was beginning to see the connection between Alec's letter and Count Julius Marulitch's intense desire to avail himself of Joan's skill as a copyist.

"You are, my dear," he said, dropping his bantering tone and looking her straight in the eyes.

"How can such an absurdity be dreamed of?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Because it is a dream that will come true. Listen, now, and don't be afraid, for these gray old trees of Barbizon have heard madder whisperings than that you should become a Queen. It is in the natural order of things that I, who gave my best years to devising the ruin of Kings, should be chosen in my dotage to help in fixing a King firmly on his throne. It is some sport of the gods, I suppose, a superhuman jest, perhaps the touch of farce that makes tragedy more vivid, since even that colossal Shakespeare of yours thought fit to lighten Hamlet by introducing a comic gravedigger. Be that as it may, Joan, you are Alec's Queen, and, as he cannot come for you it follows that you must go to him. Shall I tell you why? You are necessary to him. It is decreed, and you cannot shirk your lot. He knows it, and he has written to bid you come. His enemies know it; but there is a kind of knowledge that leads its votaries blindfold to the pit, and Alec's enemies are blindly plotting now to send you to Delgratz and thus compass his ruin."

"Felix! What are you saying?"

"The truth, the simple truth. Not a whiff of metaphor or extravagance about that statement, Joan. This morning a man came to me in the Louvre. He was seeking you. He wants to pay you five thousand francs for a copy of some blazoned daub that hangs in the cathedral at Delgratz. He will pay double, four times, the money if only you will consent to go there. Why? Because he believes that Alec is infatuated about you, and that the mere hint of marriage with one who is not a Slav princess will shatter the throne of Kosnovia about the ears of its present occupant. My anxious visitor is mistaken, of course. He is trying to do good that evil may come of it; but while there is justice in Heaven any such perversion of an eternal principle is foredoomed to failure.

"But just think of that man coming to me, Felix Poluski, who has an ear for every sob that rises from the unhappy people who dwell in the borderland between Teuton and Tartar! Isn't that the cream of comedy? When I make everything clear to you, when I show you how and by whom the killing of Theodore and his wife was engineered, you will begin to understand the fantastic trick that Fate played when she sent her emissary to the hunchback artist in the Louvre. But it is a long story, and it will beguile the journey across Austria, while there are many things you must attend to ere you leave Paris in the Orient Express to-morrow night."

"Felix, it is impossible!"

"Ah! Then you don't love our Alec."

"I—I have not heard a word from his lips—well, hardly a syllable——"

"Not in the letter?"

"That is different. Felix, I can trust you. Perhaps, under other conditions, I might marry Alec; but now I cannot."

"Why?"

"Because he is a King."

"The best of reasons, if he was bred in a palace. But he has lived long enough to become a man first. Frankly, Joan, I like Alec, and I think he ought to be given a chance. At any rate, I don't see why you are afraid of him."

"I am not. Indeed, I am not!" Joan's voice was tremulous. She was on the verge of tears; for the little Pole's persistence was breaking down the barrier that she had striven to erect against her lover's pleading. Alec had not said much in his letter; but what he did say was wholly to the point.

"Come to me, Joan," he wrote. "Don't wait. Don't stop and worry about what the world will say, since it will surely be something bitter and untrue. The people here are all right, and I think they are beginning to like me; but I can see quite plainly that they will not be content until I am married, and hints are being thrown out already that there are several eligible young ladies in neighboring States. But if these Kosnovians take me they must take you too, and it will be far easier for me when they have seen you.

"Now, no hesitation, no doubts, no weighing of pros and cons. Just set your teeth and toss your head up, and tell Pauline to sling your belongings into your boxes, and before you start send me one word in a telegram. I am horribly busy, of course (for details see daily papers), and this must be the most extraordinary love letter ever written; but what does that matter when you and I understand each other? It was you who sent me here. Don't forget that, dear teller of fortunes, and I want you to be standing by my side when the storm breaks that must surely be brewing for me after an incredible success."

There was more in the same vein. Alexis the King seemed to differ in no essential from the Alec Delgrado who used to wait for her every day in the neighborhood of the Pont Neuf. Dare she risk it? The question had tortured her ever since the early morning. It was not that the prospect of being a Queen was dazzling or even dismaying in itself; she really dreaded the result of such a marriage on the fortunes of the man she loved.

But against that self sacrificing attitude she was forced to admit the plea of Alec's own bewildering lack of conventionality. If half the stories in the newspapers were true, he was the most original minded monarch that ever reigned. She was quite sure that his answer to any evasive reply on her part would be a public announcement of the fact that his promised bride was a young lady in Paris, Joan Vernon by name. And that would be worse almost than going quietly to Delgratz and being married there.

What was she to do? She found Felix Poluski's gray eyes looking at her steadfastly. In this dilemma he was her only trusted counselor, and he had already advised her to yield.

"If I even knew his relatives," she faltered. "His parents live in Paris. We have never met. How can I say to his mother, 'Your son wants me to marry him. What do you think of me?' She, a Princess, would scoff at the idea."

"Alec is well aware of that; hence he has written direct to you, and said nothing to any other person. Let me assure you that if Prince Michael Delgrado had gone to Delgratz he would have died a sudden and violent death. Prince Michael knew it, and declined the distinction. Believe me, too, Alec has the very best of reasons for consulting no one in his choice of a wife. Now, Joan, be brave! When all is said and done, it should be far more pleasant to marry a King than fling a bomb at him, and I have met several young ladies almost as pretty as you who were ready enough to adopt the latter alternative. At any rate you will take no harm by crossing the Danube. It is not the Rubicon, you know, and you have Saint Peter to lean on in case of difficulty."

So Felix did not return to Paris alone, and when he met Count Julius Marulitch next morning in the Louvre he was able to announce that Miss Joan Vernon had accepted the commission to copy the Delgratz Saint Peter and was ready to start for Kosnovia by the night mail.



CHAPTER VI

JOAN GOES INTO SOCIETY

Joan did not telegraph to Alec. She destroyed each of half a dozen attempts, and ended by taking refuge in silence. It was impossible to say what she had to say in the bald language of a telegram. Merely to announce her departure from Paris would put her in the false position of having accepted Alec's proposal apparently without reserve, which was exactly what she meant not to do, and any other explanation of the journey would bewilder him.

Her friend Leontine, housemaid at the Chope de la Sorbonne, did not fail to tell her of Alec's call the day she left Paris for Barbizon. There was no mistaking Leontine's description, which was impressionist to a degree. It was evident, then, that he not only possessed her address, as shown by the letter, but knew of her absence. So she reasoned that if he did not hear from her within forty-eight hours he would assume that she was still away from home. By that time she would be in Delgratz, and, although she felt some uneasiness at the prospect, she was brave enough not to shirk meeting him.

They were not children that they should be afraid of speaking their thoughts, nor lovesick romanticists, apt to be swayed wholly by sentiment, and she could trust Alec to see the folly of rushing into a union that might imperil his career. In the depths of her heart she confessed herself proud and happy at the prospect of becoming his wife; but she would never consent to a marriage that was not commended by prudence. Better, far better, they should part forever than that the lapse of a few months should prove how irretrievably she had ruined him.

This might be sound commonsense, but it was not love, yet all this, and more, Joan said to Felix Poluski, and the little man had nodded his head with grins of approval. Meanwhile, he sang and was busy.

Count Julius, posted now in the Pole's mottled history, had demanded absolute anonymity before he carried the negotiations for the picture any further. Felix gave the pledge readily, since Joan could not be in Delgratz a day ere she suspected the truth. At any rate, Marulitch was satisfied; he introduced Felix to a well-known dealer in the Rue St. Honore, and thenceforth disappeared from the transaction. Joan herself entered into the necessary business arrangements, about which there was nothing hidden or contraband. The terms proposed were liberal, considering her poor status in the art world; but they were quite straightforward. She was given return tickets to Delgratz for herself and her maid; Felix was similarly provided for; five hundred dollars was paid in advance, and a written guaranty was handed to her that a similar sum, together with hotel expenses, would be forthcoming in exchange for a copy of the Byzantine Saint Peter.

Of course, reviewing matters calmly in the train, she hardly expected that the second portion of the contract would be fulfilled. She knew quite well that the conspirators hoped to turn her presence in the Kosnovian capital to their own account, and when their scheme was balked they would devise some means of wriggling out of the bargain. But she laughed at the notion that she, an unknown student, should have suddenly become a pawn in the game of empire. There was an element of daring, almost of peril, in the adventure that fascinated her. It savored of those outlandish incidents recorded in novels of a sensational type, wherein fur coated, sallow faced, cigarette smoking scoundrels plotted the destruction of dynasties, and used fair maidens as decoys for susceptible Kings. Certainly, Felix Poluski, judged by his past, was no bad prototype of a character in that class of fiction; regarded in his present guise, as he sat opposite her in the dining car of the Orient Express, he looked the most harmless desperado that ever preyed on a quivering world.

His face seemed to be smaller and more wrinkled than usual. From Joan's superior height his hump was accentuated till it showed above the top of his head, and the girl was conscious, though she resolutely closed her eyes to the fact, that the admiring glances with which she was favored by some of her fellow passengers were somewhat modified by the humorous incongruity of Poluski's appearance.

At first, they tacitly avoided any reference to Alec or Delgratz. Their talk dealt with art and artists, and Joan had a good deal to say about the delights of painting in the open air.

Felix blinked at her sagely. "Behold, then, the beginning of the end!" he cackled.

"The end of what?" she asked, with some kindling of suspicion, since her queer little friend's tricks of conversation were not new to her.

"Of your career as an artist. Barbizon is fatal to true emotion. It induces a fine sense of the beauty of sunsets, of diffused light in sylvan solitudes, of blues that are greens and browns that are reds. In a word, the study of nature inclines one toward truth, whereas art is essentially a gracious lie. That is why the Greeks were the greatest artists: because they were most pleasing liars. They understood the crassness of humanity. Long before Browning wrote Fra Lippo Lippi they realized that

"We're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see; And so they are better painted—better to us, Which is the same thing."

Joan laughed, and the cheery sound of her mirth seemed to startle the staid folk in the car.

At a neighboring table a middle aged couple were dining, the woman dignified and matronly, the man small, slight, with a curiously bloated aspect which, on analysis, seemed to arise from puffy cheeks and thick, sensual lips. He said something that caused his companion to turn and look at Joan; for the woman is yet unborn who will hear another woman described as pretty and not want to decide for herself how far the statement is justified.

So the eyes of the two met, and Joan saw a worn, kindly face, endowed with a quiet charm of expression and delicacy of contour that offered a marked contrast to the man's unprepossessing features. Both women were too well bred to stare, and Joan instantly brought her wits to bear on Poluski's quip; but that fleeting glimpse had thrilled her with subtle recognition of something grasped yet elusive, of a knowledge that trembled on the lip of discovery, like a half remembered word murmuring in the brain but unable to make itself heard.

"Do you ever say what you really mean, Felix?" she asked.

"Far too often, my belle. That is why I am only a copyist.

"I am a painter who cannot paint; In my life, a devil rather than saint.

"Believe me, we artists err ridiculously when we depart from the Greek standard. Your Whistler never achieved fame until he stopped reproducing bits of nature and devoted his superb talent to caricature."

"Caricature! Whistler!" she repeated.

"Name of a good little gray man! what else? Not portraits, surely? Wise that he was, he left those to the snapshot photographer; for even the camera can be given the artistic kink by the toucher-up. Have you forgotten, then, the rage of a stolid Englishman when he saw his wife as Whistler painted her? Oh, yes, art lies outrageously and lives long, like other fables."

"But Whistler might have been bluntly accurate, a thing that is not always pleasing. For instance," and here her voice sank a little, "it might not be altogether gratifying to my pride if some one was to analyze mercilessly the precise reasons of my present journey."

"Tiens! Let us do it. It will serve to pass the time."

She laughed and blushed. "Wait a little. We have many hours before us."

"You will never have a more appreciative audience, if only you could make your voice heard above this din."

"What are you driving at? Please tell me."

"You have seen the two people sitting over there?" and he twisted eyebrows and mouth awry, with a whimsical leer of caution.

"Yes; what of them?"

"Do you know them?"

"No."

"Not even the lady?"

"She reminds me of some one—why do you ask?"

"I am surprised at you, Joan. Those charming eyes of yours should be keener. True, there is nothing feminine about Alec, and he has not suffered, like his mother. Still, there is a resemblance."

"Felix, are you in earnest?"

"Absolutely. I, at least, have not the Greek temperament. Our friends across the gangway are none other than Prince and Princess Michael Delgrado. You will discover no prophecy of Alec in his father; but he is his mother's own son, despite her weak chin and air of resignation."

Joan was dismayed, utterly astonished; the color ebbed from her cheeks. "Are they going to Delgratz?" she almost whispered.

"I suppose so. It is one of the oddest things about our lives how they run in grooves. Just now all the tiny furrows of our separate existences are converging on the Danube. We are like ships foredoomed to collision, that hurry remorselessly from the ends of the earth to the preordained crash."

"Oh, Felix, if you knew of this why did you bring me here?"

"Who am I to resist when the gods beckon? I love you, Joan, and I hate Kings; but it is decreed that you shall be a Queen, so I fold my arms and bow my head like the meekest of mortals."

"I shall quit the train at the next stopping place."

"But why? If Alec and you are to wed, it is only fit and proper that his parents should grace the ceremony."

"You harp on marriage when there may be no marriage. If Alec was not a King, it might be different; but the world will scoff when it hears that his chosen bride came to him from lodgings in the Place de la Sorbonne. What will Princess Delgrado think, now that she has seen me here, rushing off to Delgratz the instant I was summoned? Felix, I must return to Paris. Happily, I have some two thousand francs due within a week, and I can then refund the cost of our tickets, and perhaps the railway people will allow something for the incompleted journey."

"Calm yourself, ma petite! You count like the proprietress of my favorite cafe! And to what purpose? It would be a pity to act in that foolish way. There is no compulsion on you to marry Alec, and the Byzantine Saint Peter still hangs in the cathedral. Let any one so much as hint that you are throwing yourself at Alec's head, and I shall have the hinter dynamited. No, no, my Joan, we may yield to higher powers; but we do not abandon our pilgrimage because it is shared by an old scamp of a father whose sole anxiety is to fleece his son. Come, now, finish your dinner in peace, and let me explain to you why it is that Alexis III. and not Michael V. reigns in Delgratz. You don't glean many facts about monarchs from newspapers. If I brought you to a certain wineshop in the Rue Taitbout any evening after dinner you would hear more truth about royalty in half an hour than you will read in half a year."

Joan, conscious of a telltale pallor, was leaning forward with an elbow on the table and shielding her face with widespread fingers propped against cheek and forehead. In the noise and flurry of the train it was easy to tune the voice to such a note that it must be inaudible to those at the adjacent tables; but Poluski seemed to be careless whether or not he was overheard, and the girl fancied that Princess Delgrado had caught the words "Alexis," "Michael," "Delgratz." Certainly the Princess turned again and looked at her, while she did not fail to glance swiftly at the misshapen figure visible only in profile.

"Not so loud, Felix," murmured Joan. "Come to my compartment when you have smoked a cigarette. By that time I shall have recovered my wits, and I may be able to decide what to do for the best."

"Wrong again!" he laughed. "Obey your heart, not your brain, mignonne." (He bent nearer, and his extraordinarily bright gray eyes peered up into hers.) "That is how Alec won his throne. He is all heart. Those who paved the way for him were all brain. They plotted, and contrived, and spun their web with the murderous zeal of a spider; but, poof! in buzzes bluebottle Alec, and where are the schemers? Ah, my angel, if you knew everything you would be cheery as I and marry your King with a light conscience."

The two persons who were the unwitting cause of Joan's sudden misgivings rose and quitted the dining car. No one seemed to be aware of their identity. Even the brown-liveried attendants did not give them any more attention than was bestowed on the other passengers, and the girl realized that the parents of a King, even such a newly fledged King as Alec, did not usually travel with this pronounced lack of state.

"Are you quite sure they are the Prince and Princess?" she asked, scanning Poluski's wrinkled face to learn if he had not been playing some sorry jest.

"Quite sure," said he.

"But——"

"You wonder why they condescend to mix with the common horde? Learn then, my Joan, that a French booking clerk is a skeptic who can be convinced only by the sight of money. Consider the number of brokendown royalties in Paris, and picture, if you can, the scowl of disbelief that would cloud the official features of the Gare de l'Est if Prince Michael asked for a special train to Delgratz; booked it on the nod, so to speak. It could not be done, Joan, not if one substituted 'Archangel' for 'Prince.' As it is, the senior Delgrado has probably touched a friend for the money to buy the tickets."

"Yet their names would be recognized."

Felix called an attendant. "The lady and gentleman who sat at the opposite table were the Count and Countess Polina?"

"I cannot say, monsieur. Shall I inquire?"

"No need, thank you. To be precise, since you demand it," went on Poluski when the man had gone, "I asked who they were the moment we left Paris. I saw them on the platform, and the absence of any display showed that they were traveling incognito. I doubt very much if Alec knows of their journey. Can you guess why I think that?"

Joan shook her head wearily. "I am living in a land of dreams," she sighed. "I do not understand the why or wherefore of anything?"

"Listen, then, and you will see that your dreamland is a prosaic place, after all. There is a man in Paris who receives letters daily from Kosnovia, and they tell of events that are not printed for the multitude. Last night, when I was certain we should go to Delgratz, I sought him and heard the latest news. Your Alec means to economize. He has promulgated the absurd theory that the people's taxes should be spent for the people's benefit, and he says that no King is worth more than five thousand pounds a year, while many of his contemporaries would be dear at the price. He has also set up this ridiculous maximum as a standard, and intends to reduce the official salary list to about half its present dimensions.

"This fantasy has reached his father's ears, and the old gentleman is hurrying to Delgratz to check the madness ere it is too late. It is a simple bit of arithmetic: if a King, who works like a horse, is to receive only five thousand a year, what is the annual value of his father, who does nothing but lounge about the boulevards? No wonder old Michael is off hotfoot to the White City!"

Despite her perplexities, Joan had to laugh, and Felix bent nearer to clinch his argument.

"You and I must stand by Alec, my dear. I too am breathing a new atmosphere. I fought against Kings because they were tyrants; but I am ready to fight for one who is a deliverer. What do you fear, you? The world? Has the world ever done anything for you that its opinion should be considered? It will fawn or snarl as it thinks best fitted to its own ends; but help or pity? Never! Its votaries in Delgratz will strive to rend Alec when they realize that their interests are threatened. We must be there, you and I, you to aid him in winning the fickle mob, and I to watch those secret burrowings more dangerous to thrones than open revolt. It is a sacred mission, my Joan! They who named you were wiser than they knew. You were christened a King's helpmate, while I, Felix Poluski, am fated to be the most amazing product of modern civilization,—an anarchist devoted to a monarchy.

"It came on me yesterday morning in the Louvre. I saw my principles crucified for the good of humanity. Through the eyes of the Virgin I looked into a heaven of achievement, and I care not what the means so long as good results. One honest King is worth a million revolutionaries, and God, who made Alec a King, also made him honest."

Excited, exuberant, bubbling over with that very emotionalism at which he had scoffed a few minutes earlier, Felix leaned back in his chair and sang a quatrain in his singularly sweet and penetrating tenor.

Instantly every head was turned and necks were craned. A waiter, serving coffee, was so electrified that he poured no small quantity into the lap of an indignant German. Joan, too wrathful for mere words, dared not rush away instantly to her compartment, though she would have given a good deal at that moment to be safe in its kindly obscurity. And the worst thing was that she saw the coffeepot incident, and was forced to laugh till the tears came.

Cries of "Bravo!" "Again!" mingled with the iron-clamped syllables of Teutonic protest, and she distinctly heard a well bred English voice say:

"Foreign music hall artists! I told you so, though the girl looks an American. But, by gad! can't that humpbacked johnny sing!"

"Felix, how could you?" she managed to gasp at last.

"I'm sorry. I forgot we were not in Paris. But there are some here who appreciate good music. If you don't mind, I'll give them Beranger's 'Adieu to Mary Stuart.' You remember, it goes this way—"

Joan fled, making play with her handkerchief. The fast speeding train threw her from side to side of the corridor during a hurried transit; but the exquisite lines followed her clearly.

Felix sang like a robin till the mood exhausted itself. Then, deaf to enthusiastic plaudits and cries for "More!" he lit a long thin cigar and smoked furiously. Passing Joan's berth later, he knocked.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"I, the Humming Bee."

"Leave me to-night, Felix. I must think."

"Better sleep. Thinking creates wrinkles. Look on me as a horrible example."

He went away, bassooning some lively melody, but grinning the while, and if his thoughts took shape they would run:

"The struggle has ended ere it began, sweet maid. You are in love; but have not yet waked up to that astonishing fact. Now, why did the good God give me a big heart and a small head and a twisted spine? Why not have made me either a man or an imp?"

Joan could not face strangers in the dining car after Poluski's strange outburst. She remained in her own cramped quarters all next day, ate some meals there as best she could, and kept Felix at arm's length so far as confidence or counsel was concerned. On the platform at Vienna, where the train was made up afresh, she encountered Princess Delgrado. To her consternation, the older woman stopped and spoke.

"I am sorry I missed the delightful little concert your friend provided in the dining car last night," she said in French, and her voice had that touch of condescension with which a society leader knows how to dilute her friendliness when addressing a singer or musician. "My husband and I retired early, to our great loss, I hear. Are you traveling beyond Vienna? If so, and you give us another musical this evening——"

"There is some mistake," faltered Joan, unconsciously answering in English. "People who do not know Monsieur Poluski often take him for an operatic artiste. He is a painter. He sings only to amuse himself, and seldom waits to consider whether the time and place are well chosen."

"But, gracious me!" cried the Princess, amazed to find that Joan spoke English as to the manner born. "Some one said you were Polish. I doubted my eyes when I looked at you; but your companion—well, he might be anything."

"Both he and I earn our bread by painting pictures," said Joan. "Indeed, we are now bound for Delgratz to carry out a commission."

"Delgratz! How extraordinary! I too am going there. It is so disturbed at present that it is the last place in the world I should have suspected of artistic longings. May I ask who has sent for you?"

Luckily, in the bustle and semiobscurity of the station, Princess Delgrado did not pay much heed to the furious blushing of the pretty girl who had aroused her interest. It was impossible to regard one whom she now believed to be an American like herself as being in any way concerned with the intrigues that centered in the capital of Kosnovia, and she attributed Joan's confusion to the pardonable error that arose from the talk Prince Michael brought from the smoking car.

But what was Joan to answer? She could not blurt out to Alec's mother the contents of that exceedingly plainspoken epistle now reposing in her pocket. For one mad instant she wondered what would happen if she said:

"I am being sent to Delgratz by people who wish to drive Alec out of the kingdom, and I am really considering whether or not I ought to marry him."

Then she lifted her head valiantly, with just that wood-nymph flinging back of rebellious hair that Alec was thinking of while riding to his Castle of Care after a long day in the saddle.

"There is nothing unusual in my being chosen to copy a picture," she said. "Art connoisseurs care little for politics. To them a new Giotto is vastly more important than a new King, and I am told that both are to be found in Delgratz nowadays."

Prince Michael strolled up. He was pleased that his wife had made the acquaintance of the charming unknown, whom he had looked for in vain during the day.

"Ah," he said, with polite hat flourish, "I feared we had lost the pleasant company of which I heard——"

"You were misinformed," broke in his wife hastily in English. "This young lady is visiting Delgratz for art purposes. The gentleman who sang last night is the celebrated painter, Monsieur—Monsieur——"

"Felix Poluski," said Joan.

Prince Michael started as though a scorpion had found a crack in his patent boots.

"Poluski—Felix Poluski!" he cried. "I know that name; but he was fond of using strange colors on his palette if I remember rightly."

Felix, owing to his small stature, was compelled to dodge among the crowd on the platform like a child. He appeared now unexpectedly, and Michael's exclamation was not lost on him.

"Excellent, Monseigneur!" he said. "You always had a turn for epigram. I am glad to find that you have not forgotten the brave days of old when you and I used to spout treason together, you because you hungered after a dynasty, and I because I preferred dynamite. Odd thing, both words mean power, strength, sovereignty; the difference lies only in the method of application. But that was in our hot youth, Michael——"

"Imbecile!" hissed the Prince, his red face blanching, as once before when a man spoke of the perils that hedge a throne in the Balkans. "This is Vienna. I shall be recognized!"

Felix snapped his fingers. "They don't care that for you, Monseigneur—never did! You could have come and gone as you pleased any time during these thirty years. If any one is feared here, it is I. But, my veteran, why this display of wrath? You know me well enough. Didn't you see me last night?"

"No—that is, I did not recollect. Your face was hidden."

"Ah, you had something better to look at. Well, who goes to Delgratz? Get aboard, all!"

During this brief but illuminating conversation the Princess and Joan could do nothing else but gaze from one man to the other in mute surprise, and Joan was grieved beyond measure that Felix should treat Alec's father with such scant courtesy. Even while they were making for the steps of the sleeping cars, she managed to whisper tremulously to the Princess:

"Please don't be angry with Monsieur Poluski. His brusk manner often gets him into trouble. Forgive me for saying it, but your son knows him well, and is very fond of him, and I am sure Felix would do anything that lay in his power to help—to help King Alexis III."

"My son! Do you also know him?"

"Yes."

"Have you met him in Paris?"

"Yes."

"But I have never seen you at the Rue Boissiere."

"No. We met at Rudin's, and sometimes in the Louvre."

"And does he know that you are coming to Delgratz?"

"No. I assure you——"

The Princess hesitated. It was not in her kind heart to think evil of this singularly frank looking and attractive girl. "Will you tell me your name?" she said, turning with one foot on the step; for they were about to enter separate carriages.

"Joan Vernon."

"I suppose it is idle to ask, but you are not married?"

"No, nor likely to be for a very long time."

"Aboard!" cried a guard, marveling that women could find so much to say at the very last moment.

"Well," said the Princess, "I hope to see you at dinner. If not, in Delgratz."

Joan took good care that no one except her maid and an attendant saw her again that evening. She felt bruised and buffeted as though she had been carried among rocks by some irresistible current. Even her mind refused to act. The why and the wherefore of events were dim and not to be grasped. Over and over again she regretted the impulse that led her to take this journey. Felix, as friend and artistic tutor, was invaluable; but in the guise of mentor for a young woman who had her own way to make in the world, and nothing more to depend on than her artistic faculties and a small income from a trust fund, he was a distinct failure. What would Alec think of it all? And what would Alec's mother say when her son told her that Joan Vernon was the woman he meant to marry?

So Joan grew miserable, and developed a headache, and wept a little over perplexities that were very real though she could not define them. And Felix dined alone, and smoked in dumb reverie, and when Prince Michael, warmed with wine and cheered by the knowledge that a wearisome journey was drawing to a close, unbent so far as to ask him to sing, the little man shook his head.

"You'll hear me singing in Delgratz, Monseigneur," he said. "I shall have something to think about then, and I sing to think, just as you live to eat. At present, there isn't a note in the box. Now, if madame can spare you, just sit down there, and you and I will talk of old times. For instance, poor Amelie Constant—she died the other day——"

"Ah, bah!" growled Michael. "That is not interesting. Old times of that sort generally mean times one would rather forget. Au 'voir, M'sieur Poluski. We shall meet across the Danube. If your principles permit, come and see me at court."

"My principles carry me into strange company, Monseigneur," said Felix gravely.



CHAPTER VII

JOAN BECOMES THE VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCES

On arriving at Delgratz, Joan still avoided her distinguished traveling companions. Indeed, no one paid any heed to her, since Prince Michael's vanity could not resist the temptation of making himself known, and when the word went round that the King's father was in the station, there was such a press around him and the Princess that ordinary passengers were of little account.

Monseigneur was flattered by the excitement caused by his unexpected appearance, and he momentarily regretted the lack of display that resulted from his decision to travel incognito. It would have been so much more effective if he had been greeted by the King and a glittering staff the moment he descended from the train. It was undignified, too, to pass through the streets of the capital in a disheveled hired vehicle, when a royal carriage, surrounded by a cavalry escort, might have brought him to the palace in style. It was somewhat late in the day, however, to rectify the mistake now. He could not hang round the station while a messenger went to his son, and if he meant to effect a surprise he had succeeded admirably.

Leaving a valet and maid to bring the luggage, which an obsequious customs officer cleared at once, he ushered his wife into a ramshackle victoria and told the man to drive to the Schwarzburg.

Every Serb is a born gossip; but a policeman had whispered the names of the eminent pair, and awe kept the driver's tongue from wagging, else Prince Michael would have received a greater shock than the welcoming bump of a singularly bad pavement. Luckily the Black Castle lay no great distance from the railway, since Delgratz was but a small place when the palace was built, and the town had long ago closed around it on every hand.

During the short drive Michael tried to be cheery, though he had slept little during two nights. "These old streets have really changed very little," he said. "When I was a boy I remember thinking how magnificent they were. What an eye opener it must have been for Alec when he realized that he had given up Paris—for this!" and he waved a deprecating hand toward the unkempt houses, yellow washed and dingy; for the White City, though white when seen from a distance, turns out to be an unhealthy looking saffron at close quarters. The Princess cared nothing for the squalor of the town. She was thinking of her son.

"I wish we had told Alec we were coming, Michael," she said. "Now that we are here, the reasons you urged for secrecy seem to be less convincing than ever."

"Alec would have telegraphed his prompt advice to remain where we were."

"Perhaps——"

"Perhaps you will allow me to decide what is best to be done, Marie. Our affairs had reached a crisis. So long as there was a chance of my becoming King I was able to finance myself. Now that Alec is firmly established, and filling empty heads with all this nonsense as to retrenchment and economical administration, every creditor I had in the world is pestering me. You cannot realize the annoyance to which I have been subjected during the last fortnight. Life was becoming intolerable, just because Alec was talking galimatias to a number of irresponsible journalists."

"Why not write and tell him our troubles? He would have helped us, I am sure. And that which you call rubbish seems to have caught the ear of all Europe. Even 'The Journal des Debats' published a most eulogistic article about him last week."

"Poof!" snorted Monseigneur. "Those Paris rags pander to republicanism. Every word, every act, of an impetuous youngster like Alec is twisted into an argument against the older monarchies. Give an eye to the mean looking building on the right. That is the Chamber of Deputies. Alec made the speech there that won him a throne. Who would have believed it? Just a few words, and he became King!"

Something in Prince Michael's tone caused his wife to look at him sharply. "You are not growing envious, Michael?" she asked.

"No; but I was a fool."

"Because I shall keep you to our compact," she said, with a firmness of manner that surprised the pompous little man by her side. He had been answered in that way so seldom during their married life that the novelty was displeasing.

"Ah, bah! what are you saying?" he cried. He stifled the next words on his lips; for the horse passed under an arch, and not even the studied repose of a princely boulevardier could conceal his new amazement.

An industrial army was busy in and around the famous residence of the Kings of Kosnovia. They were tearing it to pieces. The roof was off, one wing was wholly dismantled, and the beautiful gardens were strewn with debris.

"In the name of Providence, what is going on?" demanded Monseigneur of the driver.

"It is the King's order, your Highness," said the man, glorying in the fact that the muzzle was off—by request. "The castle is to be demolished, and a new National Assembly built on the site."

"Our ancient house pulled down and made a sty for those hogs! The King must be mad!"

"We esteem him highly in Delgratz," said the man stoutly. "He thinks more of the people than of palaces, and they say that he means to convert some of the gold lace into white bread."

The bewildered and infuriated Michael now remembered that the few officers encountered in the railway station or the streets seemed to be far less gaudily attired than in former years. In a passing thought he attributed the alteration to the wearing of undress uniform during the early hours; but the cab driver's words seemed to hint at some fresh wave of reform. His bulging eyes continued to glare at the ruined palace; but native caution warned him against being too outspoken in the presence of one of the lower order.

"When was this work begun?" he asked.

"Three days ago, your Highness. The King decided that the banqueting hall should be destroyed as quickly as possible. He says it taints the air. As for the Assembly, it must wait. Money is not so plentiful."

"What is it, Michael?" cried the Princess, aware that something unforeseen had happened; but unable to grasp its significance, owing to her ignorance of the language.

Monseigneur, who had stood up in the carriage, subsided again. He raised both hands in a gesture of bewilderment. "Alexis III. has signalized the first month of his reign by destroying the historic home of our race—that is all, madame!" he muttered bitterly.

"But why are we remaining here? Where does Alec live? He must inhabit a house of some sort. Tell the man to drive there at once!"

The Prince affected not to hear. "What could Stampoff be thinking of to permit this outrage?" he murmured. "Why was not I consulted? Idiot that I am, and coward too! I see now the mistake I made. Can it be rectified? Is it too late?"

A second carriage, laden with luggage, drove in through the gateway. The valet and a French maid gazed in discreet wonder at their master and mistress seated disconsolately in front of a tumbledown building.

"Michael, I insist that you give the driver directions!" cried his wife vehemently. "We cannot remain here. The least shred of commonsense should warn you that we are making ourselves ridiculous."

"Ah, yes, one must act," agreed the Prince. He glanced up at the enthusiastic supporter of the new regime.

"We have traveled here from Paris, and his Majesty's recent letters have missed us," he said, with a perceptible return of the grand air that had served him in good stead for many years. "Take us to his Majesty's present residence. The error is mine. I should have told you that in the first instance."

"The King is living in the President's house, Excellency. It is not far; but you will not find his Majesty there this morning. At four o'clock he rode to Grotzka with the mad Englishman——"

"Ha! and who may that be?"

"An English milord, who laughs always, even when his Majesty and he are trying to break their necks at a game they play on horseback, hitting a white ball with long sticks. I have seen them. They make the young officers play it, and there are three in hospital already. This is hot weather for such an infernal amusement!"

Prince Michael nodded. Like every other person watching affairs on the Danube, he had read of Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir's adventure with the Austrian authorities,—indeed, Europe had almost expected a declaration of war over the incident,—but he did not know that Beaumanoir was still an inhabitant of Delgratz.

"To Monsieur Nesimir's!" he said sullenly, and left it to the Princess to give instructions to the servants to follow, though the poor woman did not yet know whither she was being taken. She was very angry with her husband, and she blamed herself for not having telegraphed to her son before leaving Paris. But she had yielded to Michael Delgrado during so many years that it was difficult to abandon the habit now; yet she promised herself a full explanation with Alec when they met, and that must be soon, since here she was in Delgratz, where, judging by the newspapers, the King was in evidence every hour of the day.

The President's house was distant only a stone's throw, and, though obviously mystified, stout Nesimir met his unexpected guests cordially. He was disconsolate because of the King's probable absence till late in the afternoon.

"What a pity his Majesty chose to-day for a visit to the artillery camp!" he cried. "But I shall send a courier; he can return by noon. How is it nothing was said as to your Highnesses' visit. I dined with the King last night——"

"We wished to surprise his Majesty," explained Prince Michael. "You know how outspoken he is, and how easily these things get into the newspaper; so we started from Paris without a word to a soul. Send no courier after him, I beg. A rest of a few hours will be most acceptable to the Princess and myself. Madame is fatigued after a long journey, while I would ask nothing better than an armchair, a cup of coffee, a cigarette, and a chat; that is, if you can spare the time, Monsieur le President."

Nesimir would be charmed to comply with Monseigneur's desires in every respect. Really, the elder Delgrado seemed to be even more approachable than his son; for the President was unable to fathom many of the social views propounded by Alexis III. This unheralded advent of the King's parents, too, betokened some secret move. He was sure of that, and, being a man to whom political intrigue was the breath of life, he saw that a gossip with Prince Michael might convey information of much possible value in the near future. So the Princess Delgrado was ushered to a room by Madame Nesimir with all possible ceremony, and the two men established themselves on a cool veranda.