aid, "that no government in Europe
has a secret which you do not know. I am told that you have changed a
crown or two from head to head in your career. Let me see _your_ hand."

Instantly he had held it out. The fastidiously manicured fingers were as
tapering and white as her own.

"Madame," he observed gravely, "you flatter me. My hand has done
nothing. But I do not attribute its failure to its lack of brawn."

"Some day," murmured Delgado, from his inert posture in the deep
cushions of a divan, "when the time is ripe, I shall strike a decisive
blow for the Throne of Galavia."

Jusseret's lip had half-curled, then swiftly he had turned and flashed a
look of inquiry upon the woman. Her eyes had been on Louis and she had
not caught the quick glint that came into the Frenchman's pupils, or the
thoughtful regard with which he studied her and the Duke across the edge
of his teacup. Later, when he rose to make his adieux, she noted the
thoughtful expression on his face.

"Sometimes," he had said enigmatically, and had paused to allow his
meaning to sink in, "sometimes a scepter stays where it is, not because
the hand that holds it is strong, but because the outstretched hand is
weak or inept. Your hand is suited."

She had searched his eyes with her own just long enough to make him feel
that in the give-and-take of glances hers did not drop or evade, and he,
trained in the niceties of diplomatic warfare, had caught the message.

So the Countess had been fired with ardent dreams and later, when the
time seemed ripe, it was to her that Jusseret went, and with her that he
made his secret alliance.

The ambitions cherished by Marie Astaride to become Louis' queen were
secondary to a sincere devotion for Louis himself.

When at the last he had weakened and threatened to crumple, it was she
who goaded him back to resolution. When the Duke had gone half-heartedly
to his lodge to await the decision of the European Powers, it was she
who went to Puntal to direct the conspirators and watch, from the
windows of her hotel suite, the fortress on the jetty.

Her one deplorable error had been in mistaking Benton for Martin. This
had been natural enough. Though she had never met the "English Jackal,"
she had once or twice seen him at a distance, and she had been misled by
a strong resemblance and an excessive eagerness.

The afternoon she had spent on the balcony of her suite, her eyes fixed
on the Fortress _do Freres_.

At la