thway with acclamation and greeting! Her heart
beat high with adoring love and her eyes filled with happy tears.

"My Janus!" she cried, and then again, "my Janus," she whispered softly,
filling the syllables with a wealth of tenderness and sympathy. She felt
that she could not wait until he should come again; these few days had
seemed so long!

But her elation passed and a sense of overwhelming disaster possessed
her. "The Senate had known it all--the Senate had told her
nothing--_nothing about Carlotta_. Why had they not named her--was it
because--because----?"

And then the questionings that had come to her hastily and been lost in
the recital of the perils and escapes of one so beloved came back with
renewed force and would not be quieted, but called out for an answer.
When Janus came she would ask him--in her staunch fair soul, she knew
that she _must_ ask him, though he might be angry and the bare thought
of this made her shrink and quail--it even shadowed a little the
pleasure of his longed-for coming--for he had always been so knightly to
her. But yet, she could not wait! A great horror came over her of the
old Queen, who had been painted as without principle and of wild
passions--shrinking from nothing so that she might gain her will, and
she was glad in her soul that Elena was not the mother of her Janus,
while she struggled with her Venetian pride and promised herself to be
the truer to him for his wrongs. And so the night wore on; and between
her longing and her trouble there was no sleep for her while the day
delayed.

A vague shape of terror seemed to hover between her and her vision of
the future that had been so golden. Where was Carlotta? Might she not
come again and strive to win back her crown? Were the nobles many who
would uphold her?

Nay; but it was Janus whom the people loved--Janus! who had been crowned
their king, with all solemn ceremony in Alexandria, by order of the
Suzerain of Cyprus--to oppose him was rebellion! Janus--her beloved--so
winsome, so masterful! Then, slowly out of the darkness rose the noble
face of Lorenzo the Giustinian, full of quiet and strength--her mother's
face, loving, comforting--both asking her best of her; and the Question
grew in her soul. "Perhaps Carlotta's right was greater--_could it be
greater_ than her husband's?"

X

All day the queen had been restless and depressed, starting at the sound
of a footfall only to drop her eyes again in disappoi