It was a joyful cry, which got smothered at once in confusion. Turning quickly, Jacqueline beheld a little Bretonne with eyes cast down and cheeks aflame. Yet even then Berthe gave a cosy sigh of relief. There was cannonading not far away. They had just been taken by brigands, and as suddenly left alone on the road. Thus Jacqueline's company ever cost her many a tremor. Yet somehow one of those chevaliers de Missour-_i_ needed only to appear, and she felt as secure as a kitten on the hearth rug. A chevalier de Missour-_i_ had but now ridden up to the coach door. "Berthe!" whispered Jacqueline severely, so that the girl thought her dress was awry. "Quick, tuck your heart away in your pocket. It's right there on your sleeve." Whereat Berthe employed the sleeve to hide her higher mantling color. Jacqueline turned on the chevalier at the window, and surveyed _his_ sleeve. It was covered with dust, but Jacqueline's big eyes could see through dust. She felt about her a subtle atmosphere that made her an outsider. "Ah, Monsieur le Troubadour?" came her bantering recognition. Mr. Boone's French crowded pleasantly to his tongue tip. "Mademoiselle," he returned, "and," he added, with an odd glance toward Berthe, "Madame l'Imperatrice, uh--how goes it?" Jacqueline's lashes raised inquiringly, until she remembered how the lank gentleman before her, with the tender heart of a Quixote, had mistaken Berthe for the Empress, months before at the Cordova plantation. She liked him somehow better now for persisting in it. "Her Imperial Highness," she explained, very soberly, "may deign presently to observe that you are here, monsieur, though, as you see, her thoughts are far away. However, if you can possibly give your own to a humbler person, to myself, dear Troubadour, I should very much like to know what is to happen next. Use fine words, if you must; even put it into verse, only tell me----" With an impulsive shove she flung open the door and stepped into the road. She could still see Driscoll's troop, or rather the cloud of dust, speeding toward Queretaro, but her arm swept the horizon impersonally. "Only tell me," she demanded, "what's happening now, over yonder?" "Pressing business, ma'am--mademoiselle, and," Daniel lied promptly, "Colonel Driscoll wished me to make you his excuses." "The minstrels of old, sir," said Jacqueline, "usually accompanied their more gallant fibs with a harp." Her vivacity was rising fast, and for some reason, Berthe darted an angry look of warning on Mr. Boone. But the poor fellow was blind to Jacqueline's jealousy of a distant conflict, and he blundered further. "Jack Driscoll's just that way," he apologized for his friend cheerfully. "_Abundat dulcibus vitiis_--he's chuck full of pleasant faults. When there's a clash of arms around, let the most alluring Peri that ever wore sweet jessamine glide by, and--she can just glide. While with me----"