e?"

They were completely in the heavy shadow now, between the short clipped
pines, where no one, even but a few feet away, could see, and before
replying she looked at him, her grim face relaxing into a smile. She had
always watched him before with a sort of angry jealousy, but John
believed that he now read welcome and gladness in her eyes.

"Suzanne! Suzanne!" he repeated, his insistence ever growing stronger.
"Is there no word for me?"

"Aye," she said, "my mistress bids me tell you that she is grateful,
that she understands all you have risked for her sake, that she can
never repay you sufficiently for your great service, and that she feels
safer because you are near."

"Ah," breathed John, "it is worth every risk to hear that."

"But she fears for you. She knows that you are in great danger here. If
they discover who you are, you perish at once as a spy. So she bids me
tell you to go away. It is easy to escape from here to the Italian
frontier. She would not have you lose your life for her."

"Is it because my life is of more value to her than that of any other
man? Oh, tell me, I pray you?"

Another of her rare smiles passed over the grim face of the woman.

"It is a question that Mademoiselle Julie alone can answer," she said.
"But when she went to her room she wept a little and her tears were not
those of sorrow."

"Oh, then, Suzanne, she is indeed glad that I am here. Tell her that I
came for her, and that I will not go away until she goes too."

"She is in no great danger here; she is a prisoner, but they treat her
as a guest, one of high degree."

"Auersperg would force her to marry him."

Suzanne smiled once more, but gravely.

"The prince would marry her," she said, "and he is not the only one who
wishes to do so. But fear not. Auersperg cannot force her to marry him.
She is of the same tempered steel as her brother, the great Monsieur
Philip. Were she a man as he is, she would dare as much as he does, and
being a woman she will dare in a woman's way none the less."

"And the others, Kratzek and Pappenheim, and von Arnheim if he should
come, they are young and brave and true! Might she not, as the only way
of escape from the high-handed baron, marry one of them?"

For the fourth time Suzanne smiled. Never before had she permitted
herself that luxury so many times in a month, but there was an odd glint
in this latest smile of hers, which gave to her face a rare look of
softness.

"Nor wi