"Am I to understand, then, that the lady whom I am about to marry has not found favor among you?"
Alec spoke quietly; but there was a ring of steel in his voice that might have warned a bolder man than the President. His stern glance traveled round the Council table; but he saw only downcast and somber faces. One thing was abundantly clear,—this attack on Joan was premeditated. He wondered who had contrived it.
"It is not that the lady does not command our favor," declared the spokesman, very pale now and drumming nervously with his fingers on the edge of a blotting pad. "Those of us who have met her are charmed with her manners and appearance, and our only regret is that Providence did not ordain that her birthplace should be on the right side of the Danube."
"Oddly enough, I was born in New York," interrupted Alec, with a touch of sarcasm that was not lost on his hearers.
"Your Majesty was born a Delgrado," said the President, "and if Miss Joan Vernon could claim even the remotest family connection with one of the leading houses of Kosnovia, Montenegro, or even Bulgaria, every man here would hail your Majesty's choice in a chorus of approval."
"Since when has the supposed drawback of my intended wife's nationality come into such prominence?" demanded the King sharply.
"Since it became known that your Majesty meant to marry a lady whose avowed object in coming to Delgratz was to follow her occupation as an artist."
Stampoff's harsh accents broke in roughly on a discussion which had hitherto been marked by polite deference on the part of its originator.
"What! are you too against me, General?" cried Alec, wheeling round and meeting the fierce eyes of the old patriot who sat glaring at him across the Council table.
"Yes, in that matter," was the uncompromising answer. "We feel that our King must be one of ourselves, and he can never be that if his wife differs from us in race, in language, in religion, in everything that knits a ruler to his subjects."