s!--Voila, what more's to be done?"

Indeed, what more simple? Or more to be desired? Yet there was nothing
she desired less. She thought of what she had found in Mexico, and must
leave behind. It was a dead thing, true, and already buried. But--the
grave was too fresh as yet. However, the real reason for her staying
involved something else.

She made no reply, for at the moment a strange voice, with a jagged
Mexican accent and a thin insidious inflection, broke in upon them, and
startled them all three.

"Nay, Monsieur le Duc," it began, rolling the title as a morsel on the
tongue. "Your Grace would deprive us of too much honor. Why, indeed,
should mademoiselle not remain among us?"

Turning quickly, Jacqueline beheld the stranger's black eyes upon
herself. He, too, wished to know why she stayed in Mexico, but in his
sharp, shifting look there was a penetration quite different from that
of the guileless Michel. He bestrode a magnificent horse that seemed
made for armor, whereas he himself would surely have been crushed under
so much as a Crusader's buckler. Being so very small, and perched so
very high, he cut a ludicrously martial figure with his plumed hat and
epaulettes and gold buttons and braid and medals and exquisitely mounted
sabre. It was not a French uniform that he wore, but Mexican Imperial,
and stupendously ornate. And within the brave array, he was such a
little, little man!--insignificance glorified into caricature.

But the pigmy was not altogether on parade. He had that morning been
receiving arsenals and fortresses from the French; in short, the keys of
the Empire. For he was Commander in Chief of the Imperial armies, was
this species of manikin. And ugly? He was a man of lifted upper lip
under a bristling moustache, a man of fangs, a wee, snarling, strutting,
odious creature of a man. A deep livid scar split his cheek and would
not heal. Instead of arousing sympathy, it proclaimed him rather for the
scratches he gave to others. For he was that Mexican of infamous name,
the Leopard. Once he had looted the British Legation. Another time he
massacred young medical students attending the wounded of both sides.
There were stories of children speared and tossed in ditches. Yet
certain priests blessed his ardor as defender of the Church. Maximilian
had sent him on a mission to Palestine, since he was abhorrent to the
moderates. But now he was back again, to lead the clerical armies. The
valley of Mexic