Wondering not a little, Driscoll hastened back into the town. As the physician did not follow, he arrived alone. But in the door of the archduke's cell he stopped, angry and embarrassed. For his eyes encountered a second pair, which were no less angry, which moreover, were Jacqueline's. Maximilian and Padre Soria, the father confessor, were also there, but Driscoll at first saw no one but Jacqueline. As with him, she had been vaguely summoned, without knowing why. A last testament was to be signed, she imagined, but in his choice of witnesses she thought that Maximilian might at least have shown more delicacy. As to cruelty also, she would not confess, but cruelty it was, nevertheless. To see again this American was to know memory quickened into torture, and days afterward there would still be with her, vividly, hatefully, the beloved awkwardness of his strong frame, the splendid, roguish head, now so forbidding, and more than all, the way he smiled of late. It was a smile so cold, so cheerless, a something so changed in him since the old, piquant days of their first acquaintance. Despise herself as she might, Jacqueline knew how the sight of the man halted there would leave her whole woman's being athirst and panting. Maximilian's thin white face lighted eagerly when he perceived that Driscoll had come. The haggard despair of two days before had given way to a serene calm, like that which soothes a dying man when the pain is no longer felt. In a gentleness of command that would not be denied, he rose and brought the American into the room. "Colonel Driscoll," he began, "you know, of course, that a witness is the world's deputy. He is named to learn a certain truth, but afterward he must champion that truth, even against the world. So you find yourself here, but first I wish to thank----" "Please don't mention it," Driscoll interposed. "I'm willing to do anything I can." "Then remember," said Maximilian, "that you are a witness, and a witness only. Can you bear that in mind, senor, no matter what you may hear?" Driscoll nodded, but the very first words all but made him a violent actor as well. Maximilian had turned to Jacqueline. For a moment he paused, then with a grave dignity spoke. "Mademoiselle," he said, "reverently, prayerfully, I ask your hand in marriage." She gasped, and so sharp and quick that certainly she was the most dumbfounded there. Her utter stupefaction amazed Driscoll as much again as the question itself. He stiffened as though struck. If this were a revelation? If it could be--if it could be that she really knew no reason why she should marry Maximilian? The archduke observed them both, and his eyes shone with kindliness. But making a gesture for patience, he hurried on. "Father Soria here," he said, "will come in the morning, just before the--the execution, to perform the ceremony. A judge of the Republic will come too, for the civil marriage. As to the banns----" "But why--_why_, parbleu?"