"You dear creature!" she said. "Why did you not tell us you were in America?"
"An envoy always delivers his message in person, my belle. I am here on affairs of state. The telegraph is but a crude herald, and I was forbidden to write."
Alec dragged him into the room. "Business first, Felix," he said. "That is the motto of strenuous America. Now, what is it?"
"Beliani came to me in Paris," said the hunchback, affecting the weighty delivery of one charged with matters of imperial import. "He brought with him letters from Stampoff and Nesimir, which I shall deliver. He also intrusted me with a copy of a unanimous resolution of the Kosnovian Assembly, passed in secret session."
Joan's face suddenly paled, Mrs. Talbot's hands clenched the arms of the chair in which she was sitting, and the two women exchanged glances. None of this escaped Alec, who was seemingly unmoved.
"Behold in me, then," continued Poluski, "the Ambassador of Kosnovia. Delgratz wants again to see its Alexis, who is invited to reoccupy the throne on his own terms,—wife, infant, mother, Bosko, Pauline, even myself and the domestic cat, all are welcome. There are no restrictions. At a word from the King even the Assembly itself will dissolve."
Somehow, Poluski's manner conveyed that this was no elaborate jest, and Joan's lips trembled pitifully when, after one look at the youthful Alec, who was lying on a cushion and saying "Coo-coo" to a rattle, she awaited her husband's reply. He too looked at her in silence, and even Joan became dematerialized for one fateful moment. In his mind's eye he saw the sunlit domes and minarets of the White City. The blue Danube sparkled as of yore beneath its ancient walls. Through the peaceful air of that quiet Denver suburb he caught the sound of cheering crowds, the crashing of bells, the booming of cannon, that would welcome his return.
But he thought, too, of the fret and fume of Kingship, of the brave men and gracious women who had occupied an unstable throne and were now crumbling to dust in the vaults of that gloomy cathedral. He smiled tenderly at his wife, and his hand stole out to meet hers.
"I refuse, Felix!" he said quietly.