“A man?” he murmured, breathing exaltation. “Then am I, at my last moment, come into harmony with God’s own 481ordering of the universe. For he made man on the sixth day, not a Hapsburg. Man, and after His Own Image–Oh, but that is the title the hardest of all to win! You–you don’t think, señor, that you would like to take it back?”
Driscoll reddened inexplicably. Murguía’s ivory cross was still in his pocket.
“No!” he blurted out with sudden defiance. “It’s the truth!”
“Then,” said Maximilian solemnly, “on your word I stake my faith. To-morrow, at the judgment-seat, I shall hope to hear myself called so.”
“Your Highness,” questioned Jacqueline in a kind of daze, “Your Highness did not intend to escape last night?”
“No, he did not,” Driscoll answered for him. “He got Miramon and Mejía started all right, and then, without knowing that your plot had failed, he turned back to this cell here, alone.”
“Your Highness, you did that for–for––”
Her voice broke, and she stopped abruptly and went to the narrow window. With her back to them, she groped for the dainty bit of cambric that was her handkerchief.
“So you see, my daughter,” said the priest, drawing near her, “what he would have given, what, before Heaven, he has given, to tell you what you so hotly resent. Do you resent it now?”
The beautiful head shook slowly. She was touching her eyes with her handkerchief.