Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/71

 was prepared, in which Anéli's name had been substituted for Stephen's. On Saturday morning it was presented to the King. "Shall I sign?" he asked. "Yes, sign," said she. And he signed.

"Ouf!" she cried. "That's settled."

And she hardly once changed her mind again until Sunday night; and even then she only half changed it.

"If it weren't too late," she announced, "do you know, I believe I'd decide to go with you, in spite of everything? But of course I never could get ready to start by to-morrow morning. You couldn't wait till Tuesday?"

The King said he couldn't.

"And now, my dears" (as Florimond, who loves to tell the story, is wont to begin it), "no sooner was her poor confiding husband's back a-turned, than what do you suppose this deep, designing, unprincipled, high-handed young woman up and did?"

Almost the last words Theodore spoke to her were, "Do, for heaven's sake, try to get on pleasantly with Tsargradev. Don't treat him too much as if he were the dust under your feet. All you'll have to do is to sign your name at the end of the bills he'll bring you. Sign and ask no questions, and all will be well."

And the very first act of Anéli's Regency was to degrade M. Tsargardev from office and to place him under arrest.

We bade the King good-bye on the deck of the royal yacht Nemisa, which was to bear him to Belgrade, the first stage of his journey. Cannon bellowed from the citadel; the bells of all the churches in the town were clanging in jubilant discord; the river was gay with fluttering hunting, and the King resplendent in a gold-laced uniform, with the stars and crosses of I don't know how many