“Are you Juno’s husband?” were the first coherent words.
“Yes; miserable that I am!”
“Bravo!” exulted Carolina. “The Napolitana shall not enter.”
“And my uncle? He lives?”
“Lives! By the mass! He is too much alive.”
“Grazie a Dio! I thought I had killed him. She told me he was dead; to fly, that the police were after me.” The others did not understand just then.
“And the bust?” breathed Armando.
“It is here.”
The band had relapsed into silence, and the air was filled with the drone of a weird island chant that lacked only the tom-tom to perfect its Hindu cadence. The lips of the marchers scarcely moved as they gave forth their hymn of praise to the Genius of Spring. And there was the Queen, wabbling along in her push-cart chariot, the idol of Mulberry’s rabble—the “Presidentessa” whom her creator had dreamed—oh, so trustfully!—to see enthroned upon a porphyry pedestal in the White House, admired of the rich and great. Armando would have dived into the cortège, pushed aside the candle-bearers who guarded the Queen, and striven to reclaim his own, but the grip of Carolina’s hands on his arm held him back. She had guessed his death-courting purpose. A picture of knife-blades gleaming in the candlelight flashed in her mind, and she put all her strength in her grasp.
“Let go!” he cried, tugging hard, but Bertino clutched his other arm at the command of Carolina. “Magnificent God! Am I to stand here and see them carry it away?”