Jacqueline looked at him sharply. But in his deferential manner she could detect no hint of a second meaning. Yet he had laid bare the kernel of the whole business that bore the name of Jacqueline. She betrayed no vexation. If this were her cross, she was at least too haughtily proud to evade it. For a passing instant only she looked as she had in the small boat, when she had said that about the mission of a woman being to give. The next moment, and the mood was gone. With knowledge of her identity, the project that was building in the stranger's dark mind loomed more and more dangerously venturesome. But as he gazed and saw how pretty she was, audacity marched strong and he wavered no longer. And when she thanked him, and added that the ship was only waiting until she finished her coffee, he roused himself and drove with hard will to his purpose. "Going on by water?" he protested. "But Senorita de Aumerle, we are in the season for northers. Look, those mean another storm," and he pointed overhead, to harmless little cotton bunches of clouds scurrying away to the horizon. "Eh bien," returned the senorita, "what would you?" He would, it appeared, that she go by land. He hoped that she did not consider his offer an empty politeness, tendered only in the expectation of its being refused. He so contrived, however, that that was precisely the way his offer might be interpreted, and in that he was deeper than she imagined. She grew interested in the possibility of finishing her journey overland. He informed her that one could travel a day westward on horseback to a place called Valles, then take the City of Mexico and Monterey stage, and reach the City in two days, which was much shorter than by way of the sea and Vera Cruz. He spoke as dispassionately as a time table. But he noted that she clothed his skeleton data with a personal interest. And Ney also, who had caught the drift of things, saw new mischief brewing in her gray eyes. "You really are not thinking, mademoiselle----" he interrupted. "And why not, pray?" "Why not? Why--uh--the bandits, of course." Jacqueline turned to the stranger who served as itinerary folder. Would he dispose of the childish objection? He would. But he wondered why the senor had not mentioned one who was the most to be feared of all bandits; in fact, the most implacable of the rebels still battling against His Truly Mexican Majesty. The stranger paused expectantly, but as Ney seemed to recognize no particular outlaw from the description, he went on with a deepening frown, "----and who is none other than the Capitan Don Rodrigo Galan." "Who's he?" Ney inquired, willing enough to have any scarecrow whatever for Jacqueline. "Is it possible?--Your Mercy does not know?" Ney pleaded that he had never been in the country before. "But surely," the Mexican objected, "Don Rodrigo is a household word throughout Europe?"