ing two or three scared servants on the stairs, I made straight for
her room, tapped and entered. Abrupt as were my movements, however,
someone had contrived to warn her; for though two of her women sat
working on stools near her, I heard a hasty foot flying, and caught the
last flutter of a skirt as it disappeared through a second door. My
wife rose from her seat, and looked at me guiltily.

"Madame," I said, "send these women away. Now," I continued when they
had gone, "who was that with you?" She looked away dumbly.

"You do well not to try to deceive me, Madame," I continued severely.
"It was Mademoiselle D'Oyley."

She muttered, not daring to meet my eye, that it was.

"Who has absented herself from the Queen's service," I answered
bitterly, "and chosen to hide herself here of all places! Madame," I
continued, with a severity which the sense of my false position amply
justified, "are you aware that you have made me dishonour myself? That
you have made me lie; not once, but three times? That you have made me
deceive my master?"

She cried out at that, being frightened, that "she had meant no harm;
that the girl coming to her in great grief and trouble--"

"Because the Queen had scolded her for breaking a china jar!" I said,
contemptuously.

"No, Monsieur; her trouble was of quite another kind," my wife answered
with more spirit than I had expected.

"Pshaw!" I exclaimed.

"It is plain that you do not yet understand the case," Madame
persisted, facing me with trembling hardihood. "Mademoiselle D'Oyley
has been persecuted for some time by the suit of a man for whom I know
you, Monsieur, have no respect: a man whom no Frenchwoman of family
should be forced to marry."

"Who is it?" I said curtly.

"M. Pimentel."

"Ah! And the Queen?"

"Has made his suit her own. Doubtless her Majesty," Madame de Sully
continued with grimness, "who plays with him so much, is under
obligations to him, and has her reasons. The King, too, is on his
side, so that Mademoiselle--"

"Who has another lover, I suppose?" I said harshly.

My wife looked at me in trepidation. "It may be so, Monsieur," she
said hesitating.

"It is so, Madame; and you know it," I answered in the same tone. "M.
Vallon is the man."

"Oh!" she exclaimed with a gesture of alarm. "You know!"

"I know, Madame," I replied, with vigour, "that to please this
love-sick girl you have placed me in a position of the utmost
difficulty; that