with bowed heads. Sobieska, gloom encircled, stood with bent head and
quivering lips. His sombre eyes were fixed upon the inanimate Cockney as
though to this modern he would recall the miracle of Lazarus. Then out
of the well of his woe, came his voice, deep, and grief-laden. In the
simplicity of life's greatest emotion, he pointed toward the couch.

"The King?" he questioned, looking straight into Trusia's eyes now. "The
King? Does not your blood--your common heritage--tell you that the King
is dead? God rest His Majesty."

She turned from one to the other in total bewilderment; finally, as
though trusting none other, she came to Carter for enlightenment. He had
comprehended in a glance.

"What do they mean?" she begged plaintively. "My poor head is awhirl in
all this gloom."

"Carrick is King," he answered. A single tear, a perfect pearl of pity,
hung abashed upon her cheek.

"It is so," assented the Minister, as she awaited his confirmation.
Gradually her grief dried in the realization of the awful deception
which had been practiced by some one on her country. The flame of her
burning rage shot suddenly into sight.

"What treason brought him here, then?" she asked haughtily, pointing
indignantly at Stovik.

The latter smiled deprecatingly, as Sobieska answered, "Part of a
Russian plot, Highness, of which, so far as we can ascertain, this
gentleman has been the innocent victim. It was by such a plan they
sought to lure all the patriots within the boundaries of our land, then
to draw their net about us. I pray God that we still have time."

"Who was it?" she inquired with lips white and drawn, and brow
contracted.

"Josef."

All eyes were turned upon the accused, whose inscrutable countenance
underwent no shadow of a change, no fear of death was there, no regret
for infamy. If the expression had altered at all, it was to display a
shade more of triumphant insolence. The Duchess turned sternly to him.

"Is this true?" she asked, loathing the necessity of speaking to him.
Yet there was no passion in her voice; the situation was too grave for
that.

He smiled his hateful, unchanging smile, as he bowed a taunting assent.

"You shall die," she said, in the same level tones. She was not cruel,
had not lost an iota of her womanliness. The crushing magnitude of his
falsity to her country made her forget that she was aught else than the
regent for these people and that here was a matter of primitive,
vindictiv