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 Querétaro 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. 419Now 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 Querétaro? How did you come?”