OMB failed him, and with it my heart sank
also.

"Answer, sir! answer!" the Queen cried. "And without subterfuge!
Who was it, sir, whom you saw come from the forest this morning?"

"Madame?"

"In one word!"

"If your Majesty will--"

"I will permit you to answer," the Queen exclaimed.

"I saw his Majesty return," he faltered--"and M. de Sully."

"Before them! before them!"

"I may have been mistaken."

"Pooh, man!" the Queen cried with biting contempt. "You have told it
to half-a-dozen. Discretion comes a little late."

"Well, if you will, madame," he said, striving to assert himself, but
cutting a poor figure, "I fancied that I saw Madame de Conde--"

"Come out of the wood ten minutes before the King?"

"It may have been twenty," he muttered.

But the Queen cared no more for him. She turned, looking superb in her
wrath, to the King. "Now, sir!" she said. "Am I to bear this?"

"Sweet!" the King said, governing his temper in a way that surprised
me, "hear reason, and you shall have it in a word. How near was
Bassompierre to the lady he saw?"

"I was not within fifty paces of her!" the favourite cried eagerly.

"But others saw her!" the Queen rejoined sharply. "Madame Paleotti,
who was with the gentleman, saw her also, and knew her."

"At a distance of fifty paces?" the King said drily. "I don't attach
much weight to that." And then, rising, with a slight yawn. "Madame,"
he continued, with the air of command which he knew so well how to
assume, "for the present, I am tired! If Madame de Conde is here, it
will not be difficult to get further evidence of her presence. If she
is at Brussels, that fact, too, you can ascertain. Do the one or the
other, as you please; but, for to-day, I beg that you will excuse me."

"And that," the Queen cried shrilly--"that is to be--"

"All, madame!" the King said sternly. "Moreover, let me have no
prating outside this room. Grand-Master, I will trouble you."

And with these words, uttered in a voice and with an air that silenced
even the angry woman before us, he signed to me to follow him, and went
from the room; the first glance of his eye stilling the crowded
ante-chamber, as if the shadow of death passed with him. I followed
him to his closet; but, until he reached it, had no inkling of what was
in his thoughts. Then he turned to me.

"Where is she?" he said sharply.

I stared at him a moment. "Pardon, sire?" I said. "Do you thin