l; there was a pitiful quivering
of her lips that wrung her son's heart, and he was utterly at a loss to
understand why a discussion as to his future should lead to this display
of passion.

"But, mother darling," he cried, "why are you grieving so? You and dad
must maintain a certain state,--one begins by assuming that,--and it is
no secret that the Delgrado side of the family was not blessed with
wealth. Very well. Let me try to adjust the balance--the bank balance,
eh? Really, why weep?"

Alec's gallant attempt to avert the storm failed again. His Serene
Highness muttered words in a foreign tongue that sounded anything but
serene. The Princess did not understand; but her son did. His brows
wrinkled, and the good humored gleam died out of his eyes.

"Perhaps, sir," he said stiffly, "this subject had better be discussed
when my mother is not present."

Prince Michael looked at him fixedly. For some reason the little man was
very angry, and he seemed to resent the implied slur on his good taste.

"I am determined to end this farce once and for all," he vowed. "Before
you joined us, I told the Princess----"

The door was flung open. The young man who had followed Joan and Alec
into the Louvre that morning rushed in. His pink and white face was
crimson now, and his manner that of unmeasured, almost uncontrollable
excitement. He gazed at them with a wildness that bordered on frenzy,
yet it was clear that their own marked agitation was only what he
expected to find.

"Ah, you have heard?" he snapped, biting at each syllable.

"Heard what, Julius?" demanded Monseigneur, with an instant lowering of
the princely mask, since Julius dabbled in stocks and was reputed well
to do.

"The news! The news from Kosnovia!"

Prince Michael affected to yawn. "Oh, is that all?" he asked.

"All! _Grand Dieu_, what more would you have? It means--everything."

"My good Julius, it is long since I was so disturbed. What, then, has
happened? The Danube in flood is no new thing."

"The Danube!" and the newcomer's voice cracked. "So you do not
know--sire?"

The little word seemed to have the explosive force of nitroglycerine.
Its detonation rang through the room and left them all silent, as though
their ears were stunned and their tongues paralyzed. Alec was the first
to see that some event far out of the common had reduced his cousin,
Count Julius Marulitch, almost to a state of hysteria.

"We are at cross purposes," he said qui