ur. Then she grew very still, and that frightened me more yet.
Once I even thought she was dead, and I put my arm about her. But her
heart was beating, and her eyes were open, wide open and dry. I could
see, for we were passing between the Paseo lights. I laid her head on my
breast, and after a while I heard her lips move. 'God bless him!
God--Oh, I hope there _is_ a God, just for this, to bless him, and
keep him!'"

"H'm'm," said the marshal, and went back and forth again, more perplexed
than ever.

Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she
started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not
dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the
tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf
behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the
mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline;
that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under
some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she
had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that
no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon's wish,
however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was
sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of
meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx
reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great
deal to catch the Sphinx's whisper at all. Besides, he owed his
elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal.

"Berthe," he said at last, "there's just one man who can interfere where
Mademoiselle d'Aumerle disposes, but he is rather far away. I mean the
Emperor of France."

The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. "My dear
mistress!" she sobbed.

There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was
brushed aside.

"Perhaps," came a softly ironical voice, "a woman might so much as veto
our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho."

Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often
retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the
loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband's secret was never
one for her.

"Step into this little room," she said to Berthe, opening a door. "It
will not take long," she added, an assured light in