e been
an Obrenovitch on the throne of Kosnovia! Ferdinand VII., Michael V.,
Alexis III.! By the patriarch! somehow you Delgrados have managed at
last to breed a King!"

CHAPTER III

IN THE ORIENT EXPRESS

After some haggling, Alec wrung four thousand five hundred francs out of
Dumont. Then, at five minutes past six, he jumped into a cab and was
driven to the Place de la Sorbonne.

Of course he had ascertained Joan's address easily. He made no secret of
the fact that he had seen her on her way to the Louvre nearly every day
of the twenty that had elapsed since their first meeting. His knowledge
of the route she followed advanced quickly until he found out where she
lived. He would not have dared to call on her now, if it had not been
for the tremendous thing that had happened in his life; for he was sure
he would become King of Kosnovia. The art that conceals art is good; but
the art that is unconscious of artifice is better, and never had
soothsayer arranged more effective preliminaries for astounding
prediction than sibyl Joan herself.

Paris, too, might well witness the rising of his star. What other city
stages such memorials to inspire ambition? Behind him, as his cab sped
down the Champs Elysees, rose the splendid pile of the Arch of Triumph;
in front, beyond the Place de la Concorde, the setting sun gilded a
smoke blackened fragment that marked the site of the Tuileries; while
near at hand the statue of France, grief stricken yet defiant, gazed
ever and longingly in the direction of her lost Provinces. Here, within
a short mile, stood the silent records of three Empires, founded, as
time counts, within a few years. Two were already crumbled to the dust.
The survivor, consolidated on the ruins of France, flourished beyond the
Rhine.

Perhaps, if read aright, these portents were not wholly favorable to one
about to try his luck in that imperial game. But Alec, though a good
deal of a democrat at heart, was cheered by the knowledge that so long
as the world recognizes the divine right of Kings, no monarch by descent
could lay better claim to a throne than he. And he was young, and in
love, and ready to believe that youth and love can level mountains, make
firm the morass, bridge the ocean.

He wondered how Joan would take his great news. He thought he could
guess her attitude. At first she would urge him to forget that such a
person as Joan Vernon existed. Then he would plead that she was asking
th