it were her poor crushed face. In the old days she had made him
forget avarice or fear, and now, before this token of her, the hardness
died out of his eyes and they swam in tears. Driscoll gazed down on him
pityingly. The old man was palsied. He trembled. There passed over him
the same spasm, so silent, so terrible, as on the night of her death,
when he had sat at the court martial, his head buried in his arm.

"Rod said you would want it," Driscoll spoke gently. Then he moved away.
An Imperialist officer was approaching over the field who would bring
the help which Murguia refused to accept of the Republicans.

Driscoll looked back once. The Imperialist officer was carrying Murguia
into the town. He was a large man, and had red hair. His regimentals
were gorgeous. There seemed to be something familiar about him, too.
Greatly puzzled, Driscoll unslung his glasses, and through them he
recognized Colonel Miguel Lopez. Lopez, the former colonel of Dragoons,
now commanded the Imperialist reserve, quartered in the monastery of La
Cruz around the person of their sovereign. But Lopez had once condemned
Murguia to death. A strange solicitude, thought Driscoll, in such a high
and mighty person for a little, insignificant, useless warrior as poor
Murgie. A strange, a very strange solicitude, and Driscoll could not get
it out of his head.

CHAPTER XV

OF ALL NEWS THE MOST SPITEFUL

"O poor and wretched ones!
That, feeble in the mind's eye, lean your trust
Upon unstaid perverseness."--_Dante_.

Her gestures, her every word, were an effervescence. There was something
near hysteria in the bright flashes of her wit. However gay, joyous,
cynical, Jacqueline may have seemed to herself, to Berthe, terrified
though the girl was, Jacqueline's mood was a sham.

"The _frisson_, oh, those few exquisite seconds of emotion, eh
Berthe?" she exclaimed. "Pursued by robbers--the chase--the rescue--and
the jolting, the jolting that took our breaths! Why, Berthe, what more
would you have? Helas, to be over so quickly! And here we are, left
alone in our coach, robbers gone, rescuers gone! Berthe, do you know, I
believe they compared notes and decided we weren't worth it. But I
_should_ have thought," she went on in mock bitterness, "I should
indeed, that at least our Fra Diavolo would have been more gallant, even
if----"

"Even if?" prompted Berthe, then bit her lip.

"Even--Oh Berthe, _fi donc_, to catch me so because I wa