oment could be embittered with sight of a
cross, then, he firmly believed, the American needed only to be tempted
with the means to do it. Moreover, in a sudden impulse, Driscoll had
taken the holy symbol, "to do with as he chose." There was no message,
Murguia had explained. The Senor Emperador would read the graven name,
"Maria de la Luz," and that would suffice.

Looking now on the cultured gentleman caressing his beard, Driscoll
thought again how hellishly distorted was the sign of salvation then in
his pocket. But he left it there. He, too, had a king's pride, incapable
of low spite. Charity alone, though, would have held him, if he had but
known that Maximilian was ignorant of the dead girl's fate.

The archduke for his part had been amiable and conciliatory, because
there was a certain delicate question he wished to ask.

"Oh by the way, mi coronel," he said abruptly, "I must extend my excuses
for keeping you waiting in the corridor just now. But there was another
visitor here. And as we happened to be talking of--well, of a rather
personal matter, not intended for outside ears----"

"Do not worry. When you raised your voice, I turned and left."

"But perhaps," said Maximilian slowly, "it would have been better if you
had overheard, either you or another knowing the cruel rumors
which--which link my recent visitor's name with my own. Then the truth
would have been made known. That truth, senor," he hastened to add,
despite a hardening frown between the American's eyes, "means first that
I have been honored, indeed, in my visitor's----"

He got no further. A broad hand closed over his mouth.

"Another word of that, and I'll--I'll----"

The threat was left unfinished. Gasping in the chair where he had
fallen, Maximilian found himself alone. He was vaguely nonplussed. There
had been so many revelations of late that he thought this one simply a
further re-adjusting of himself to the modern world of men. The present
instance had to do with the critical juncture where the woman enters.
But he had learned something else, too. The American loved her, and that
was important. Yet lovers were very contrary beings, he mused
lugubriously.

"Still, I shall try again," he decided. "One humble success against my
career of distinguished failures should not be too much to expect."

The night that followed, a black, favorable night, was the time planned
for escape. Horses ready saddled waited outside the town under the
a