There followed—silence. Stovik and the courier dropped to their knees 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."