"Well, nothing to laugh about, mother," said he, "since I was just telling Joan that the end has come for some one in Kosnovia; but——"
"Is Michael dead?" interrupted his mother, paling a little.
"Yes, mother, he is."
She bent her head in brief reverie, and when she looked up again she seemed to be gazing at the smiling landscape. But they knew better. Her thoughts had flown many a mile from Colorado.
"May Heaven be more merciful to him than he was to me!" she said at last, and that was her requiem for the man to whom she had given her best days. She forgave him; but she could not find it in her heart to regret his loss.
When the New York papers reached Denver, the small household—whose interest in the affairs of far off Kosnovia was little dreamed of by their neighbors—gleaned fuller details of the tragedy that had again overwhelmed the Delgrados. Many times did the conversation turn to the tiny Kingdom with which their own lives had been so intimately bound up. So far as the American press was concerned, the topic was soon forgotten; but Alec, having obtained a Budapest journal, found that Stampoff, Beliani, and Sergius Nesimir were taking steps to form a Republic.
"Sometimes," said Alec during their talk that evening, "it is the expected that happens."
"I suppose," said Joan musingly, "that the unlucky little Principality ought to prosper under a popular Government—unless——" She paused, and her husband was quick to interpret her thought.
"Unless they obtain the right sort of King," he cried.