"Mademoiselle, tell me, _why_ have you returned?"

The question was so abrupt and so stern, she thought in a flash that he
must have penetrated that Napoleonic intrigue which had flung her back
upon the Western shores. But Maximilian believed he knew another reason
for her pallor, and was encouraged.

"You have already given one answer, mademoiselle," he hurried on, "and
in too great a humility to dare hope it otherwise, I took you at your
word. But now that you mock me--ah, you shall confess, you are back in
Mexico on _my_ account!"

"And would that merit this august displeasure, sire?"

Her words sprang from relief; he suspected nothing of her secret
mission. So the color might flood to her cheeks again, the mischief to
her eyes, and with it a most perilous daring.

For the Hapsburg, it was coy surrender.

"Mademoiselle--Jacqueline!"

Her name! The old nickname fondly given her in childhood, when she was a
torment, and an anarchist to all law, and got innumerable scoldings, and
basked unperturbed in love and adoration! Her name, that only Mexico had
tainted! For the first time it passed his lips. But the sweet, quaint
syllables had long been in his thoughts, with something, too, of the
early worship in their bestowal.

Curiously enough, a whimsical hardy figure in homespun gray took acute
shape in her mind's eye. The features were oddly sharp and clear. There
was even the rough trooper's disdain, which had been in his expression
when first he saw her, but which she had not noticed at the time. She
brushed the vision aside haughtily, as she would have done had the man
himself intruded. But she could not stem so easily the wave of self
disgust that swept her back from this other man, a prince of Europe. And
when she smothered that self-abasement, it was a matter of will. She
recalled her interview with the Sphinx in the Tuileries. She recalled
her country, and the empire she meant to win, a gift to France, worthy
of Napoleon, of the Great Napoleon. Then her will became as a master
outside of self, and horrid in its iron cruelty. She half lifted her
hand, and allowed the royal prince to possess it.

The tapestry behind them parted and fell. A light step crossing the room
was suddenly arrested, and a low bewildered cry, half stifled in the
utterance, arrested them.

"Fernando!"

The Emperor straightened and wheeled. Turning round, Jacqueline placidly
surveyed a young girl, and her brows arched. She was not