“Pardon me, child,” he said gently. “No, I cannot imagine.”
Impulsively Jacqueline leaned over the desk and gave him her hand. “Thank you,” she said, in a voice that trembled unexpectedly. From that moment, too, she abandoned tactics. The wiles of courts would avail nothing against the primitive straightforwardness of the man before her. It seemed, moreover, 448good and homely, to cast them aside. She took a seat near the window, since he remained standing until she did, and waited. He should speak first, and afterward, she would accept. For there was nothing, she felt, that she could say. O rare tongue of woman, to so respect the leash of intuitions!
As for Don Benito Juarez, he had not meant to speak at all. But knowing her now to be not what he had thought, he spoke as he had not to any plenipotentiary of any crowned head.
“You are a Frenchwoman, señorita,” he began. “Tell me, your coming must be explained by that?”
“Now,” said Jacqueline, smiling on him cordially, “Your Excellency’s imagination is getting better.”
“And you wish to save Maximilian,” the Presidente stated, rather than questioned, “because he is a victim of France.”
“Because he will be considered so.”
The old Roman smiled. “My dear young lady,” he said, “an answer to France is the least of my obligations. Yet you expect it, and ask for clemency, though I deny all the great nations?”
“Oh señor, what’s the use? Let him go!”
The keen black eyes regarded her quizzically. “Do you know,” he said, “this is the second time I’ve heard that question to-day? One of our American officers had himself put in command of the escort for Maximilian’s two lawyers here, and now I believe he did it simply because he too wanted to know, ‘What’s the use?’ It was anti-climax, and a wet blanket over the fervid eloquence of the two lawyers. But nevertheless, he hit the one argument.”