Her head was bent low, and she gasped something that sounded like an excuse. Alec recoiled from her in sudden horror. His hands were pressed feverishly to his forehead, and a hoarse cry of anguish came from his panting breast.
"I think I shall go mad!" he almost sobbed. "My own mother enter into this league against me! My mother——Oh, it cannot be! Stampoff, you, I know, would not scruple to sacrifice my dearest hopes to further your designs. Could you find none but my mother to aid you?"
He reeled as under a blow from an unseen hand, and at that unfortunate moment Prince Michael Delgrado thought fit to assert his authority.
"This ridiculous scene has gone far enough," he cried. "I was not aware that your pretty artist had quitted Delgratz; but it is quite evident that her departure is the best thing that could possibly happen for the good of the Kingdom. If Stampoff advised it, and your mother saw fit to point out to the girl the danger she was bringing to you and the monarchy, such action on their part has my complete approval."
Alec gazed blankly at the pompous little man. It needed but Prince Michael's outburst to stamp the whole episode with the seal of ineffable meanness and double dealing. He recalled the cowardice displayed by the Prince when Stampoff urged him to seize the vacant throne, and his gorge rose at the thought that Joan had been driven from his arms in order that this pygmy might secure the annual pittance that would supply his lusts in Paris. At that moment Alec was Berserk with impotent rage. His mother's complicity in the banishing of Joan denied him a victim on whom to wreak his wrath.
But there still remained a vengeance, dire and far reaching, which would teach a bitter lesson to those who had entered into so unworthy a conspiracy.
Leaping to the curtain which concealed the sword, he snatched it up and smashed it across his knee. "See, then, how I treat the symbol of my monarchy," he cried with a terrible laugh. "I shall soon demonstrate to you what a pricked balloon is this Kingship of which you prate. I believe that you, my own father, are ready to supplant me, I know that Julius, my cousin, is straining every nerve to procure my downfall; but you shall learn how a man who despises the pinchbeck honors of a throne can defeat your petty malice and miserable scheming. Monsieur Nesimir, I proclaim Kosnovia a Republic from this hour! Here and now I abdicate! Summon a meeting of the Assembly to-morrow, and I shall give its members the best of reasons why the State will prosper more under the people's rule than under that of either of the men who are so anxious to succeed me."
"Abdicate! Republic! What monstrous folly!" cried Prince Michael, his plethoric face convulsed with anger at this unexpected counterstroke.
"I am saying that which, with God's help, I shall perform!" cried Alec, despair falling from him like a discarded garment as he realized what his project would mean to Joan and himself.
"You may abdicate, of course, if you choose," came the scornful retort; "but you have no power to break the Delgrado line."