at----"

"Hush, you would have saved me."

"Oh, only incidentally, and you knew it. Yet you must----"

"Don't! There's nothing to forgive.--But wait, we will grant that there
really is, but only that I may exact my price of forgiveness."

"The price? Name it."

"That you will marry me, here, to-morrow morning, before I die."

Jacqueline raised her head. "Has Your Highness," she demanded, smiling
shyly behind her tears, "has he forgotten the woman's, rather my
consideration, before such a question?"

Driscoll straightened, squared his shoulders to take a blow. To his
blindness her manner looked like awakening love for the other man--and
for the man himself, not for the prince! His sense of loss, his agony,
were extreme. But of the old bitterness he now knew nothing. His rival
was putting the question. "And according to that consideration,
mademoiselle?"

Driscoll did not see her swift glance toward himself. He was hurrying
out lest he might hear her answer. And she let him go--till he reached
the door. But there, like one frozen, he halted rigidly.

"Helas, I do not love you, sire," Jacqueline had answered, very quietly.

Maximilian, however, did not seem heart broken.

His attention was all for the mere witness. He saw the effect on that
witness. In Driscoll's glad face he read his own triumph, his own
purpose achieved. Jacqueline was righted at last.

"No," he agreed, "I could not hope for so much.--But another might."

Then apropos of nothing, he went and flung his arms about Driscoll. The
astounded trooper could only grip his hand, just once, without a word.
Then he was gone.

Maximilian watched him go. The priest turned to Jacqueline. She, too,
stood poised so long as his spurs rang through the corridor. At last
silence fell on them. For a moment she hesitated. Then, trembling, her
eyes moist, she held out her hand. "Good-bye," she whispered. But,
impulsively, she raised her arm and touched the doomed man's forehead
lightly with her finger tips, making a blurred sign of the cross. And,
not daring an instant longer, she too fled.

Maximilian was alone with the priest. The room was growing dark. It was
the last night.

"Now, father, light the tapers, there on the altar. Yes, I am ready.
Ready? Blessed Mother in Heaven, it is more than I had thought to be!"

CHAPTER XXII

THE ABBEY OF MOUNT REGRET

"O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious star