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I thank God, your majesty, that I have lived to see this day to see the last of the Rubinroths upholding the glorious traditions of the Rubinroth blood." Barney led the reserves slowly through the wood to the rear of the extreme left of his line. The attack upon the Austrian right center appeared to be meeting with much greater success than the American dared to hope for.
"For three hundred years the Von der Tanns have labored and fought for the welfare of Lutha. It was a Von der Tann that put the first Rubinroth king upon the throne of Lutha. To the last they were loyal to the former dynasty while that dynasty was loyal to Lutha. Only when the king attempted to sell the freedom of his people to a powerful neighbor did the Von der Tanns rise against him.
Lutha would be lost should the truth be known that the king was dead, for there was no heir of closer blood connection with the royal house than Prince Peter of Blentz, whose great-grandmother had been a Rubinroth princess. Slowly, at last, she wrote as follows: SIRE: The king's will is law. That was all.
"Twice, and only twice since the old king died, have I felt that the future of Lutha was safe in the hands of her ruler, and both these times it was you who sat upon the throne. Do not desert us now. Let me live to see Lutha once more happy, with a true Rubinroth upon the throne and my daughter at his side." Butzow added his pleas to those of the old chancellor. The American hesitated.
When he learns that he no longer may rely upon the strain of the Rubinroth blood that flowed in the veins of the American from his royal mother, the runaway Princess Victoria, there will remain to him only the other alternative of seizing the throne for himself. He is a very ambitious man, your majesty.
The girl saw it all now the whole scheme to lure her to Blentz. Even then, though, she could not believe the king had been one of the conspirators of the plot. Weak as he was he was still a Rubinroth, and it was difficult for a Von der Tann to believe in the duplicity of a member of the house they had served so loyally for centuries.
Barney had often wondered why it was that neither of them would ever speak of those days, or of the early life of his mother, Victoria Rubinroth, though of the beauties of her native land Mrs. Custer never tired of talking. Barney Custer was thinking of these things as his machine wound up the picturesque road.
"Sire! the Von der Tanns have always been loyal to the house of Rubinroth. And but a single thing rises superior within their breasts to that loyalty, and that is their loyalty to Lutha." He paused for an instant before concluding. "And I, sire, am a Von der Tann." There could be no mistaking the old man's meaning.
So long, of course, as the American lives there is always the chance that he may return and seek to gain the throne. The fact that his mother was a Rubinroth princess might make it easy for Von der Tann to place him upon the throne without much opposition, and if he married the old man's daughter it is easy to conceive that the prince might favor such a move.
"None but the royal blood of Rubinroth may reign in Lutha while there be a Rubinroth left to reign and old Von der Tann lives," he cried in conclusion. At the name "Rubinroth" Barney started. It was his mother's name. Suddenly the truth flashed upon him. He understood now the reticence of both his father and mother relative to her early life.
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