“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 last, with a wildly beating heart she had seen the King, Von Ritz and the escort ride up to the entrance and disappear.  She had waited—­waited—­waited, her nerves set for the climax, until the continued silence seemed an unendurable shock.

Then the King and escort emerged.  She, sitting pale and rigid, saw them mount and turn back unharmed toward the city.  Her ears, eagerly set for the detonation which should shake the town and reverberate along the mountain sides, ached with the emptiness of silence.

Across the street a soldier, off duty and in civilian clothes, sat on the sea-wall and whittled.  Incidentally he noticed that Madame the Countess was interested beyond the usual in some matter.  He was there to notice Madame the Countess.  His instructions from Von Ritz had been to keep a record of her goings and comings, and who came to see her or went away.

Therefore, when the King and his small retinue had trotted past the window and when Madame the Countess rose to go in, and when just as she crossed the low sill of the window she suddenly caught up both hands to her throat and fell heavily to the floor, the soldier, whittling a small crucifix, made a record of that also.  When a moment later a gentleman whom he had not seen in Puntal for months, but whom he knew as the Count Borttorff, because that gentleman had formerly been Major of his battalion, hurriedly left a closed carriage and entered the place, the incident was noted.  When still later both Borttorff and the Countess emerged and reentered the conveyance, driving rapidly away, he likewise noted these things.  Going from the pier whither he had followed the closed carriage, he reported his observations with soldierly dispatch to Colonel Von Ritz.