hat 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