How you
lost it a second time, I do not know. Now I am putting all my cards on
the table. I play--hearts only. If I and my love are not worthy of
yours, will you tell me why another, who has done nothing for you, is
preferred to me, who has risked, and am willing to risk everything for
you--life, death, the world, position, freedom, honour, all! Tell me!
Answer me!"

"I loved her first!" said the Abbe John.

"Ah, that too you said before," she cried, with a kind of sigh, "and you
have nothing more to say--I--nothing more to offer. Yet I cannot tell
why it should be so. It seems, in all dispassion, that if I were a man,
I should choose Valentine la Nina. Men--many men--ah, how many men, have
craved for that which I have begged you to accept--not for your vague
princedom, not for your vague hopes, not for your soldier's courage,
which is no rare virtue. But for you--yourself! Because you are you--and
have drawn me, I know not how--I see not where----"

"I do not ask you to obtain my release," said John d'Albret, somewhat
uneasily, "I have no claim to that; but I have on board that ship a
comrade"--here he hesitated--"yes, I will tell you his name, for you are
noble. It is Francis Agnew, her father, he who was left for dead on the
Street of the University by the Guisards of Paris on the Day of the
Barricades. He is now at the same bench as I, in the _Conquistador_----"

"What!" cried Valentine, "not the old man with the white tangled beard I
saw by your side when--when--I saw you?"

"The same," the Abbe John answered her softly.

Then came a kind of glory over the girl's face, like the first certainty
of forgiveness breaking over a redeemed soul. She drew in her breath
sharply. Her hands clasped themselves on her bosom. Then she smiled, but
the bitterness was gone out of the smile now.

"I must see this Claire," she said, speaking shortly and somewhat
sternly to herself; "I must know whether she is worthy. For to obtain
from my father (who will not of his own goodwill call me daughter)--from
Philip the King, I mean--pardon for two such heretics, one of them the
cousin of his chief enemy--I must have a great thing to offer. And such
I have indeed--something that he would almost expend another Armada to
obtain. But, before I decide, I must see Claire Agnew. I must look in
her eyes, and know if she be worthy. Then I will do it. Or, perhaps, she
and I together."

The last words were murmured only.

The Abbe John, wh