SOPHY OF KRAVONIA
"It was Monseigneur's wish. Let us avenge him! God hears me!"
"God hears you!" came all the voices.
The ceremony was finished. Six men took up the board on which the King lay, carried it down from the rostrum, and along the street to the guardhouse. Sophy followed, and her friends walked after her. Still she seemed as though in a dream; her voice had sounded absent, almost unconscious. She was pale as death, save for the Red Star.
Following her dead, she passed out of sight. Immediately the crowd began to disperse, though most of the men with arms gathered round Lukovitch and seemed to await his orders.
Basil Williamson moved away from the window with a heavy sigh and a gesture of dejection.
"I wish we could get her safe out of it," he said.
"Isn't it wonderful, her being here?"
"Yes—but I'd forgotten that." Dunstanbury was still by the window; he had been thinking that his service now would not be to Monseigneur. Yet no doubt Basil had mentioned the wisest form of service. Sophy's own few words—the words for which she cited Heaven's witness—hinted at another.
But Basil had recalled his mind to the marvel. Moved as he had been by his talk with Sophy, and even more by the scene which had just been enacted before his eyes, his face lit up with a smile as he looked across to Basil.
"Yes, old fellow, wonderful! Sophy Grouch! Queen of Kravonia! It beats Macbeth hollow!"
"It's pretty nearly as dreary!" said Basil, with a discontented grunt.
"I find it pretty nearly as exciting," Dunstanbury said. "And I hope for a happier ending.
278
