* * * *

As for the Duke, he spent his days with the Queen-Mother, and his nights
at the lodgings of Monsieur de Noirmoutiers. Catherine de Medici was ill
and old, but she kept all her charm of manner, her Italian courtesy.
Personally she liked Guise, and he had a soft side to the wizened old
woman who had done and plotted so many things--among others the night of
Saint Bartholomew. When Guise came to any town where Catherine was, he
always rode directly to her quarters. There she sermonised him on his
latest sins, representing how unseemly these were in the avowed champion
of the Church.

"But they make the people love me," he would cry, with a careless laugh.
And perhaps also, who knows, the perverse indurated heart of the ancient
Queen! For the Queen-Mother, though relentless to all heretics and
rebels, was kindly within doors and to those she loved--who indeed
generally repaid her with the blackest ingratitude.

But at Blois Guise had a new reason for frequenting his old ally.
Valentine la Nina had become indispensable to Catherine. She was, it
seemed, far more to her than her own daughter. The Queen-Mother would
spend long days of convalescence--as often, indeed, as she was fairly
free from pain--in devising and arranging robes for her favourite.

And amid the flurry Guise came and went with the familiarity of a house
friend. His scarred face shone with pleasure as he picked a way to his
old ally's bedside. Arrived there, after steering his course through the
wilderness of silks and chiffons which cumbered the chairs and made even
sitting down a matter of warlike strategy, Guise would remain and watch
the busy maids bending over their needlework, and especially Valentine
la Nina seated at the other side of the great state bed, which had been
specially brought from Paris for the Queen to die upon. There was a
quaint delight in his eyes, not unmingled with amusement, but now and
then a flush would mount to his face and the great scar on his cheek
would glow scarlet.

Once he betrayed himself.

"What a queen--what a queen she would have made!"

But the sharp-witted old woman on the bed, catching the murmured words,
turned them off with Italian quickness.

"Too late, my good Henry," she said, reaching out her hand; "you were
born quite thirty years too late. Had you been King and I Queen--well,
the world would have had news!"

She thought a little while, and then added:

"For one thing