dour D'Aubigne will help you better, or expect less
for it than I, Margot, your Majesty's humble prisoner!"

"So be it," said the King, kissing her hand, and passing over all that
was not expressed in this very sketchy view of the case; "I have found
many to betray me who owed me more than you, Margot. But never you, my
little Queen!"

"Thank you, Henry," quoth La Reine Margot, smiling demurely, with
something of the subtle Italian irony of her mother. "Perhaps, after
all, I do not help you so much because I like you, as because I love to
spite some other people who are plotting against you."

"Are they seeking my life, Margot?" said the King. "Well, there is
nothing new in that. I always keep a man or two on the look-out for
assassins. I have quite a collection of knives--some Guisard, and some
Italian, but mostly of Toledo make. There are four gates to my camp, and
the men of my guard kick the varlets south if the knife smells of our
brother Philip, north to cousin Guise, if 'Lorraine' is marked on the
blade--and as for Italy----"

"Do not say any evil of Italy," smiled Margot; "pray remember that I am
half an Italian--therefore I am fair, therefore I am cunning, therefore
I am rich--at least, in expedients."

The Bearnais said nothing, for having so many war charges, he had more
than once refused to pay Madame Margot's debts!

"I have come," she continued, after the King had sat some time silent on
the tapestried couch beside her, looking out on the sleeping Creuse,
"first of all, to see that you sign no treaty that I do not approve.
Well do I know that a woman has only to smile upon you to make you say
'Yes.' It is your weakness. The Queen, my mother, knows it also, and she
has brought hither many fair women in her train. But none so fair as I,
your wife--your wife Margot, whom camps, and wars, and kingdoms have
made you sometime forget!"

"There is, indeed, no one so fair as you, little Margot!" said her
husband. And, for the moment, he meant it.

* * * * *

Margot the Queen entered her tiring-room that night clapping her hands,
and dancing little skipping "tarantellas" all to herself, after the
Italian fashion.

"I have done this all by myself at eight-and-thirty," she cried. "I
thought I was no longer Parisian, after so many years of hiding my head
in Auvergne. But Henry never moved from my side all the evening, and as
for D'Epernon, he was as close as might be on the ot