"Ah," said Valentine la Niña softly, "I expected no other answer. But still, have you remembered that I once gave you your liberty? How you lost it a second time, I do not know. Now I am putting all my cards on the table. I play--hearts only. If I and my love are not worthy of yours, will you tell me why another, who has done nothing for you, is preferred to me, who has risked, and am willing to risk everything for you--life, death, the world, position, freedom, honour, all! Tell me! Answer me!" "I loved her first!" said the Abbé John. "Ah, that too you said before," she cried, with a kind of sigh, "and you have nothing more to say--I--nothing more to offer. Yet I cannot tell why it should be so. It seems, in all dispassion, that if I were a man, I should choose Valentine la Niña. Men--many men--ah, how many men, have craved for that which I have begged you to accept--not for your vague princedom, not for your vague hopes, not for your soldier's courage, which is no rare virtue. But for you--yourself! Because you are you--and have drawn me, I know not how--I see not where----" "I do not ask you to obtain my release," said John d'Albret, somewhat uneasily, "I have no claim to that; but I have on board that ship a comrade"--here he hesitated--"yes, I will tell you his name, for you are noble. It is Francis Agnew, her father, he who was left for dead on the Street of the University by the Guisards of Paris on the Day of the Barricades. He is now at the same bench as I, in the _Conquistador_----" "What!" cried Valentine, "not the old man with the white tangled beard I saw by your side when--when--I saw you?" "The same," the Abbé John answered her softly. Then came a kind of glory over the girl's face, like the first certainty of forgiveness breaking over a redeemed soul. She drew in her breath sharply. Her hands clasped themselves on her bosom. Then she smiled, but the bitterness was gone out of the smile now. "I must see this Claire," she said, speaking shortly and somewhat sternly to herself; "I must know whether she is worthy. For to obtain from my father (who will not of his own goodwill call me daughter)--from Philip the King, I mean--pardon for two such heretics, one of them the cousin of his chief enemy--I must have a great thing to offer. And such I have indeed--something that he would almost expend another Armada to obtain. But, before I decide, I must see Claire Agnew. I must look in her eyes, and know if she be worthy. Then I will do it. Or, perhaps, she and I together." The last words were murmured only. The Abbé John, who knew not of what she was speaking, judged it prudent to say nothing.