"My good Julius, it is long since I was so disturbed. What, then, has happened? The Danube in flood is no new thing."
"The Danube!" and the newcomer's voice cracked. "So you do not know—sire?"
The little word seemed to have the explosive force of nitroglycerine. Its detonation rang through the room and left them all silent, as though their ears were stunned and their tongues paralyzed. Alec was the first to see that some event far out of the common had reduced his cousin, Count Julius Marulitch, almost to a state of hysteria.
"We are at cross purposes," he said quietly. "My father, like the rest of us, read this morning's telegram about the overflowing of the river——"
Count Marulitch waved his hands frantically. He was literally beside himself. His full red lips, not at all unlike those of the youth in Joan's picture, moved several times before sounds came.
"It is at least my good fortune to be the first to congratulate my King!" he cried at last. "Be calm, I pray you; but a tremendous change has been affected at Delgratz. Last night, while Theodore and the Queen were at dinner, the Seventh Regiment mutinied. It was on guard at the Schwarzburg. Officers and men acted together. There was no resistance. It was impossible. Theodore and Helena were killed!" This man, who appealed for calmness, was himself in a white heat of emotion.
A stifled scream, a sob, almost a groan, broke from the Princess, and she clung to her son as though she sought protection from that bloodthirsty Seventh Regiment. Prince Michael, fumbling with an eyeglass, dropped it in sheer nervousness. Alec, throwing an arm round his mother, recalled the hoarse yelling of the newsboys on the boulevards. Was it this latest doom of a monarchy that they were bawling so lustily? He glanced at his father, and the dapper little man found it incumbent on him to say something.
"But, Julius—is this true? There are so many canards. You know our proverb: 'A stone that falls in the Balkans causes an earthquake in St. Petersburg.'"
"Oh, it is true, sire. And the telegrams declare that already you have been proclaimed King."
"I!"