urst. "Ah yes, senor, I remember,"
he said, and smiled, "one may be slapped upon the mouth, yes, yes, for
even breathing my lady's name when one talks of rumor."

Jacqueline darted at them a puzzled glance. She did not understand at
first. Then she divined. And then, wide and gloriously, her eyes opened
on Driscoll, her defender. But in the instant they sought a safer
quarter. She could not, and would not, forgive him for being there at
all.

"However," the obdurate prince continued, "our witness must bear with me
this time, for I will--_will_, I tell each of you--speak plainly.
The false scandal does exist. Deny it, dear lady, if you can.--Nay,
senor, _you_ believe it, or did. So, now, as the world's deputy
here, you must be armed to foil those venomous tongues. But there is
only one way. You shall tell them that they talk of Maximilian's
widow----"

"But----"

Jacqueline, Driscoll, both spoke at once. But the girl flashed on the
man an angry command for silence.

"Enough, enough!" she cried, "Let me speak, then end it. Whatever others
may think, Your Highness extends me his respect? Bien, but that gives me
a certain right, which is the right to consider just one thing in
answering the question of Your Highness--just one lone, little thing."

"And that?"

"Is--is whether or not I have the honor to love Your Highness. Oh, the
shame in such sacrifice, the shame you put on me! You should have known
my answer already."

Her answer? Driscoll stirred uneasily. What, indeed, was her answer?

"Yet later, mademoiselle," pursued her inflexible suitor, "when others
aspire to your hand, there might come one for whom your answer would be
favorable. How then, if this suitor, when pausing to hear what the world
says of you----"

"He'd choke it down the world's throat!" Driscoll burst forth. "He alone
need know it's a lie."

Jacqueline started as she heard him speak, but the glad and unintended
look she gave him changed as quick as thought to haughty resentment.
After all, he was still there.

"But how else," Maximilian persisted, "can such a man know so much?"

Then, a captive absolute to his lofty idea, the poet prince pleaded for
it as one inspired. All things worked, as by Heaven's own will, to
sanction what he proposed. There was Charlotte's death. There was his
own. Dying, he was still a Mexican, and might wed in any station he
chose. While if he lived, as an archduke of Austria he could not. But he
detested li