“Is there no mother,” cried the exasperated girl, “to spank both your Majesties?”
“’Tis of Her Serene Highness––” Maximilian began with dignity.
“Highness? Yes, I forgot, but not high enough to chide majesty, though she be a mother.”
“Yet she has only just warned me of her deep displeasure if–No, her message shall wait. I wish to hear first what you think. Tell me, shall I go, or shall I stay? Tell me, tell me, and why!”
Feverishly the man craved one frank word. There was in his look the prayer of a desperate gambler who watches a card poised between the dealer’s fingers. Jacqueline had one answer only. But exactly how to express it, lest she be wrongly taken, made her pause.
“In the first place,” she began slowly, “there is only a single consideration involved, and in that lies the solution of Your Majesty’s doubts. I mean the consideration of honor. Now if Your Highness is–whipped off his throne–that is ignominy–But wait, wait, I am not through. I––”
“Almost my mother’s words!” he cried triumphantly. And 340with a hand that trembled, he got out the letter from that Archduchess Sophia who had given one son a crown and loved this other as her darling.
“‘Rather than suffer humiliation by a French policy’” he read from her letter, “‘stay, stay, though you be buried under the walls of Mexico!’”
“But––” Jacqueline interposed. She had been taken amiss after all.
“You too bid me stay,” he insisted. “But I might have known. I might have known. One who never errs said that this would be your counsel. The Padre is wonderful–wonderful!”