"Earnest enough, parbleu, to make the Leopard forget Queretaro, once he was safely away." "Then why doesn't he sell out to Diaz?" Jacqueline's eyes snapped contemptuously. "Young Diaz," she replied, "is not a fighter to buy what he can take. It's only a question of a few weeks." "Then by all that's mysterious, _who_ would buy? I cannot." "Of course you cannot. That is why Marquez wants you out of the way, sire. So he left you here. The Liberals will attend to that for him." "Then who will buy? Who? Who?" The blood shot into the girl's cheeks, and one small hand clenched tightly. "France--possibly," she said. The Emperor started as from an acute shock. His thoughts raced backward, then forward, gathering the whole heinous truth about the perfidy of Marquez. "And I," Jacqueline added calmly, though she was still flushed, "I have forwarded his offer to Napoleon." "You, mademoiselle? You, an accessory?" "To Your Imperial Highness's downfall? Ah no, sire! Your Highness is no longer a factor. Your August Majesty will be eliminated absolutely before Napoleon can reply to my despatch. As I said, the Liberals around Queretaro will attend to that. Your Highness has merely delayed the profit my country might have had from his abdication. Meantime Your Highness himself has made his own ruin inevitable. But I, sire, I would not see Marquez, nor receive a word from him, until we were actually besieged in the capital, and he beyond the hope of coming to Your Highness here. Now then, if Marquez only holds out until the army of France returns----" A deep sigh interrupted her. "No longer a factor," murmured the Emperor. Thus quickly, then, could the world take up its affairs again after his elimination! "Mademoiselle," he cried suddenly, generously, "you are--superb! Dear little Frenchwoman, you are, you are!" "Poof!" said Jacqueline. "But don't you see, sire," she hurried on eagerly, "that we will have to fight the Americans? Yes, yes, then they can no longer say they _drove_ us out." "Indeed they cannot. And I, among the first, and the most heartily, do wish you a warlike answer from that firebrand of a Napoleon. But tell me, why do you come to Queretaro? How did you come?" "How? Easily. All the guerrilla bands--except one, which I escaped--are concentrated either here or with Diaz." "And Marquez let you come, you who are so important to him now?" "As though he could help it, parbleu! My message to Napoleon was in my own cipher, and after he had sent it by a scout to Vera Cruz, I informed him that in it I had directed Napoleon to send his answer to me at Queretaro. Otherwise Marquez would have kept me in prison rather than let me go. But as it was, he assisted me through the Republican lines by a secret way he has arranged for his own escape, if need be. So----" "But why did you wish to come at all?" "Ma foi, as if I knew! A matter of conscience, I suppose." "Matters of conscience are usually riddles."