ollowed him to the window; but she remained
cautiously in the shadow of the interior of the room, whence she
watched with increasing interest the face of the astrologer. Again,
after this study of the stars, the old man returned to his table, and
began to trace new figures in various corners of the patterned
horoscopes, and make new calculations. The female stood before him,
resting her hands upon the table, awaiting with patience the result of
these mysteries of the cabala.

"Each new experience verifies the former," said the astrologer,
raising up his head at last. "The truth cannot be concealed from your
majesty. His hours are numbered--he cannot live long."

"And it is of a surety _he_, of whom the stars thus speak?" enquired
the female thus addressed, without emotion.

"The horoscopes all clash and cross each other in many lines,"
answered the astrologer: "but they are not confounded with his. The
horoscope of near and inevitable death is that of your son Charles,
the King."

"I know that he must die," said the Queen-mother coldly, sitting down.

The astrologer raised for an instant his deep-set, but piercing grey
eyes, to the pale, passionless face of the Queen, as if he could have
read the thoughts passing within. There was almost a sneer upon his
lip, as though he would have said, that perhaps none knew it better;
but that expression flickered only, like a passing flash of faint
summer lightning, and he quickly resumed--

"But about this point of death are centred many confused and jarring
lines in an inextricable web; and bright as they look to vulgar eyes,
yon stars in the heavens shine with a lurid light to those who know to
look upon them with the eyes of science; and upon their path is a dim
trail of blood--troubled and harassed shall be _the last hours of this
reign_."

"But what shall be the issue, Ruggieri?" said the Queen eagerly.
"Since Charles must die, I must resign myself to the will of destiny,"
she added, with an air of pious humility; and then, as if throwing
aside a mask which she thought needless before the astrologer, she
continued with a bitterness which amounted almost to passion in one
externally so cold--"Since Charles must die, he can be spared. He has
thrown off my maternal authority; and with the obstinacy of suspicion,
he has thwarted all my efforts to resume that power which he has
wrested from me, and which his weak hands wield so ill. He has been
taught to look upon me with