windowpane of the very last he saw a face he knew, a beautiful, saddened
face, puckered just now by some immediate ill-humor. She frowned on
recognizing the French barbarian, but unlike Charlotte, she did not jerk
down the shutter. Instead, she lowered the glass by the length of her
pretty nose.

"Is it dotage already, monsieur? Then put on your hat!"

"Name of a name, yet another petulant grande dame!" But the Frenchman
turned his horse and rode beside her coach.

"Did Her Majesty pout, then?" inquired the lady within.

"Almost as superbly as Mademoiselle la Marquise."

"Thank you well, but I have a superb reason for it."

"Because you return to Paris, surely not? Yet, if that is the reason,
you need not quite despair."

"Why, what--what do you mean?"

"Only brigands, mademoiselle. When everyone is looking for abdication, a
cortege mysteriously leaving the City must be the Emperor who goes back
to Austria. The news travels like wildfire. The Indito runners go as
fast as when they brought Moctezuma fresh fish from the Gulf. I rather
think they have carried the news to an old friend of ours. It's my
chance to catch him."

"Not my Fra Diavolo--Rodrigo Galan?"

"None other. But Rodrigo is stirred by more than patriotism these days.
Upon it he has grafted a deep wrong, and he swears lofty vengeance by a
little ivory cross such as these Mexican girls wear. The conceited
cut-throat imagines there is a blood feud between himself and His
Majesty. So if he hears that Prince Max comes this way----"

"He will find Charlotte instead? But he must not detain her."

"Tonnerre!" exclaimed the Cossack chief. "Why not? She goes to Europe to
sustain the Empire, while we French----"

"All the same, let her go. She will gain nothing there. Listen to me,
monsieur. She leaves that he may _not_ abdicate, while if I stay,
she fears that----"

"He _will_ abdicate?"

"Your wits, mon colonel, are entirely satisfactory. And so she invited
me to go with her, and as first lady of her household, I could not
refuse. I wonder, now, if Fra Diavolo would deign to capture just me,
alone!"

The sharp look which Dupin gave her from behind the streams tumbling off
his sombrero was the sixth of a half-dozen. But it was this last one
that seemed to satisfy him.

"Put up the window, mademoiselle," he said, "you're getting wet."

Ten minutes later Jacqueline felt the coach lurch heavily and sink to
the hub on one side.

"Go on with your