mes,
when ladies are bitterly grieved, they swoon."

For a moment the older man studied the younger with an expression of
surprise, then the sphinx-like gravity returned to his face.

"Your Majesty, may I inquire why the cap failed to explode?" he asked,
with pardonable curiosity.

"Because"--Karyl's cheeks flushed hotly--"an American gentleman, who had
been here a few hours, intercepted the signal--and reversed it."

For an instant Von Ritz looked fixedly into the face of the King, then
he bowed.

"In that case," he commented, "there are various things to be done."

CHAPTER XIV

COUNTESS AND CABINET NOIR JOIN FORCES

When Monsieur Francois Jusseret, the cleverest unattached ambassador of
France's _Cabinet Noir_, had first met the Countess Astaride, his
sardonic eyes had twinkled dry appreciation.

This meeting had seemed to be the result of a chance introduction. It
had in reality been carefully designed by the French manipulator of
underground wires. Louis Delgado he already knew, and held in contempt,
yet Louis was the only possible instrument for use in converting certain
vague possibilities into definite realities. Changing the nebulous into
the concrete; shifting the dotted line of a frontier from here to there
on a map; changing the likeness that adorned a coin or postage-stamp:
these were things to which Monsieur Jusseret lent himself with the same
zest that actuates the hunting dog and makes his work also his passion.

If the vacillation of Louis Delgado could be complemented by the strong
ambition of a woman, perhaps he might be almost as serviceable as though
the strength were inherent. And Paris knew that Louis worshiped at the
shrine of the Countess Astaride. The Countess was therefore worth
inspecting.

The presentation occurred in Paris, when the Duke took his acquaintance
to the charming apartments overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, where the
lady poured tea for a small _salon_ enlisted from that colony of
ambitious and broken-hearted men and women who hold fanatically to the
faith that some throne, occupied by another, should be their own. Here
with ceremony and stately etiquette foregathered Carlists and
Bonapartists and exiled Dictators from South America. Here one heard the
gossip of large conspiracies that come to nothing; of revolutions that
go no farther than talk.

In Paris the Duke Louis Delgado was nursing, with lukewarm indignation,
wrath against his royal uncle of Galavia