She made no reply; but he felt the thrill that ran through her veins.
"Then," he went on, so gravely that she raised her eyes to his, seeking to catch his slightest shade of meaning; for her heart was still troubled by the fear that she had wrought him evil, "I will take you to America, my home. There is surely a nest for us out there. I have never understood it before; but often, as a boy, I felt the call of the West. It was natural, I suppose. We had many American friends in Paris, and my blood tingled when they spoke of the great rivers, the prairies, the ocean lakes, the giant mountain ranges, and the far flung plains of that wondrous continent which they describe with a reverent humor as God's own country. I feel that I shall win a place for myself in the land of my birth, and my poor mother is aching to go back there again."
He paused, and perhaps he hardly realized why Joan sighed with happiness; for she could believe, at last, that he had never a pang for his lost kingship.
"It is my home, too, Alec," she cooed. "I was born in Vermont. We are going home together."
He felt the thrill that ran through her veins
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"Yes, dear, no more partings. We shall not be wealthy, Joan. It seems that the miserable little humbug whom I have regarded as my father has wasted the whole of my mother's fortune by his extravagance. The only scrap left is a small farm near Denver, and even that would have been sold had not the crisis in Delgratz offered a wider scope for Michael's plundering instincts. It is a strange thing, sweetheart, but on the day we parted in Paris—the day the news came of the murder of Theodore and his wife—Prince Michael quarreled with my mother because she refused to sanction the sale of that last shred of her inheritance. In order to vent his spite, he had actually decided to tell me the secret of my birth in the very hour that Julius Marulitch announced the disappearance of the Obrenovitch dynasty."
"And the goddess sent you east instead of west," she said softly.
"Yes, my trial has been short and sharp; but she must have found me worthy, since she has given me—you."