dged
to-day that I returned his love if--if I did not think--for a few awful
minutes--that we should both be killed. And--and--I wanted to die in his
arms!"

Joan began to cry, and Princess Delgrado cried too, and it was in tears
that King Alexis III. found them when he had returned Prince Michael's
stately greeting and was told that the young American lady who had come
from the shattered hotel was in his mother's room.

CHAPTER X

WHEREIN THE SHADOWS DEEPEN

Joan was standing on the first floor veranda of the President's house
early next morning, when her errant thoughts were brought back to earth
from wonderland by a stir and clatter of hoofs in the courtyard. She
knew, because Alec had told her the previous evening, that he was bound
for an experimental farm certain local magnates had established in the
rich alluvial plain that forms the right bank of the Danube some few
miles from the capital city.

"At present our country exports pigs and little else," he had said. "I
mean to change all that. Austria shuts and bolts her doors by hostile
tariffs; but Turkey is open to trade with all the world, and who so
favorably situated as we, once the barriers of race prejudice are broken
down? So, behold in me a patron of agriculture and its allied arts!"

"The Turk is our hereditary enemy," snarled Prince Michael, who was much
annoyed by the poor quality of the wine at the royal repast. "Fancy me
drinking Carlowitz at my age!" he had growled to Stampoff when he
discovered that champagne was not supplied, by the King's order.

"My dear Dad, I am trying hard to erase that word 'hereditary' from the
Serbian language," laughed Alec. "It opposes me at every turn; it mocks
at my best efforts; it swathes me like the bandages of a mummy,--and I
am growing weary of its restraint. This is a question of self interest,
too. Perhaps, if I can persuade our good Kosnovians to adopt some more
up-to-date fetish, they may drop the hereditary habit of carving their
chosen rulers into mincemeat whenever a change of Government seems good
to them."

"The King of Kosnovia should never forget that the time may come when he
will be crowned Emperor at Constantinople," said Prince Michael with a
regal flourish of his plump hand.

"Precisely. The ceremony should provide a picturesque spectacle for the
cinematograph. Meanwhile, I want to enter the enemy's territory, and at
present my skirmishers are pigs which are difficult to drive. We