In a calmer moment Alec told Joan what had happened. He laid special stress on the fact that his mother was quite determined to renounce her title and revert to the name she bore during her first marriage.
"I never realized the tenth part of her suffering in Paris," he said, "though I knew far more about Prince Michael's conduct than he guessed. We must make it our business, Joan, to bring some brightness into her declining years. I have been planning our future all day in the train. Shall I become the fortune teller this time?"
"Yes," she murmured, "and perhaps I may forget that I have cost you a Kingdom."
He laughed gayly, just as he used to laugh on those bright May mornings when he waited on the Pont Neuf in the hope that he might be permitted to escort her to the Louvre.
"Never dream that I shall bring that up against you, dear heart," he said. "Delgratz ought to advertise itself as a sure cure for ambition. I liked the people; but I hated the job, and Kosnovia is already becoming a myth in my mind. I am rejoicing in my new name, Alexander Talbot. I hope you like it. My mother tells me that my father was one of the strong men of the West. I am called after him, it seems, and although my own name sounds strange to me I like the purposeful ring in it."
Joan laughed merrily. "Felix was teasing me this morning by suggesting that you might have been christened Phineas," she said.
"The wretch! And what if I was?"
She looked at him with a delightful shyness. "No matter what name you bore, you would always be my Alec," she whispered.
They were leaning over the balcony of an open air restaurant at the moment; so Alec perforce contented himself with clasping her hand.
"And now for my scheme, little girl," he said. "We will get married at once, of course."