"He did not; it is I who contemplated it. You will go?" "Surely there will be many more fitted for such an honor. Of course it will be as you arrange, sire; but I would rather stay here." Adrian moved, sighing; his lip took a softer curve and for the first time he almost looked his few years. "If you like her, monsieur, Feodor will like her. I want you to see her, to tell him good of her. She is different from any one else--when we were both in Italy we saw each other every day, and I know. She is so gentle; I want her here." Allard gazed at him in utter wonder. "Feodor believes I force the marriage to annoy him and please Dalmorov. It is not so; it is because I want Iría here. You understand that?" "I am trying, sire." Adrian stood up decisively. "Let us go in. When the time comes, you shall go with her escort." CHAPTER IX GUINEVERE OF THE SOUTH It was quite a month after that sunny noon on the Emperor's terrace, that Maria Luisa Iría de Bourbon was informed of her betrothal to the Grand Duke Feodor Stanief. She also received the announcement on a garden terrace, by a caprice of chance; but it was a terrace of the South, starred and flowered all over with violets, heavily-sweet tuberoses and blue Florentine irises. Moreover, it was sunset, and she stood a slender white figure against the rosy sky. "It is all decided?" she asked in a hushed, pathetic little voice, a voice shattered into crystalline fragments, like the dash of a clear brook against a rock. "It is sure to happen, señora?" "Quite sure," answered her mother, with a firmness not unsuggestive of Adrian. The princess made a move forward, then swayed like one of her wind-blown irises and slipped down to the old moss-green steps. When in her own room they revived her, she turned to hide her face among the pillows. "I am afraid," she whispered under her breath. "I am afraid." That was all. She had been taught obedience in a convent, and the Duquesa her mother was not to be resisted. One does not stop the mills of the gods by laying a flower across their wheels. But if Stanief seized every delay of diplomacy and ceremony in his Northern court, he was unconsciously aided by every feminine subterfuge from the Gentle Princess in her sun-kissed home. The elaborate trousseau required weeks to prepare, the autumn storms made the voyage by sea unpleasant, and the journey by land was too fatiguing and informal. Between one and another, it was six months after the announcement before the escort ship anchored in the cobalt-blue bay which makes a dimple in the curving cheek of southern Spain. And then Iría met some of her new countrymen. Not easy were their names and titles to her lisping Latin tongue, as she greeted the guests graciously and gracefully, her mother by her side. But as one gentleman was presented, she leaned forward with delicate surprise. "Monsieur John Allard," she echoed, her large golden-brown eyes on his face. "Monsieur is not then of my future country?"