eard and his eyes gleaming with excitement. "Have you not
deceived me?"

"No, sire!" I said.

"Yet you have told me day by day that Madame de Conde remained in
Brussels?"

"Certainly!"

"And you still say so?"

"Most certainly!" I answered firmly, beginning to think that his
passion had turned his brain. "I had despatches to that effect this
morning."

"Of what date?"

"Three days gone. The courier travelled night and day."

"They may be true, and still she may be here to-day?" he said, staring
at me.

"Impossible, sire!"

"But, man, I have just seen her!" he cried impatiently.

"Madame de Conde?"

"Yes, Madame de Conde, or I am a madman!" Henry answered, speaking a
little more moderately. "I saw her gallop out of the patch of rocks at
the end of the Dormoir--where the trees begin. She did not heed the
line of the hounds, but turned straight down the boxwood ride; and,
after that, led as I followed. Did you not see her?"

"No, sire," I said, inexpressibly alarmed--I could take it for nothing
but fantasy--"I saw no one."

"And I saw her as clearly as I see you," he answered. "She wore the
yellow ostrich-feather she wore last year, and rode her favourite
chestnut horse with a white stocking. But I could have sworn to her by
her figure alone; and she waved her hand to me."

"But, sire, out of the many ladies riding to-day--"

"There is no lady wearing a yellow feather," he answered passionately.
"And the horse! And I knew her, man! Besides, she waved to me! And,
for the others--why should they turn from the hunt and take to the
woods?"

I could not answer this, but I looked at him in fear; for, as it was
impossible that the Princess de Conde could be here, I saw no
alternative but to think him smitten with madness. The extravagance of
the passion which he had entertained for her, and the wrath into which
the news of her flight with her young husband had thrown him, to say
nothing of the depression under which he had since suffered, rendered
the idea not so unlikely as it now seems. At any rate, I was driven
for a moment to entertain it; and gazed at him in silence, a prey to
the most dreadful apprehensions.

We stood in a narrow ride, bordered by evergreens, with which that part
of the forest is planted; and but for the songs of the birds the
stillness would have been absolute. On a sudden the King removed his
eyes from me, and, walking his horse a pace or two along the ride,
utt