t to
repulse him, and the effort was not very convincing.

"Hush, monsieur, for pity's sake! You must not talk so to me. It ... it
hurts."

O fatal word! She meant that it was her dignity as Queen he wounded, for
she clung to that as to the anchor of salvation. But he in his egregious
vanity must of cours e misunderstand.

"Hurts!" he cried, and the rapture in his accents should have warned
her. "Because you resist it, because you fight against the commands of
your true self. Anne!" He seized her, and crushed her to him. "Anne!"

Wild terror gripped her at that almost brutal contact, and anger, too,
her dignity surging up in violent outraged rebellion. A scream, loud and
piercing, broke from her and rang through the still garden. It brought
him to his senses. It was as if he had been lifted up into the air, and
then suddenly allowed to fall.

He sprang away from her, an incoherent exclamation on his lips, and when
an instant later Monsieur de Putange came running up in alarm, his hand
upon his sword, those two stood with the width of the avenue between
them, Buckingham erect and defiant, the Queen breathing hard and
trembling, a hand upon her heaving breast as if to repress its tumult.

"Madame! Madame!" had been Putange's cry, as he sprang forward in alarm
and self-reproach.

He stood now almost between them, looking from one to the other in
bewilderment. Neither spoke.

"You cried out, Madame," M. de Putange reminded her, and Buckingham
may well have wondered whether presently he would be receiving M. de
Putange's sword in his vitals. He must have known that his life now hung
upon her answer.

"I called you, that was all," said the Queen, in a voice that she strove
to render calm. "I confess that I was startled to find myself alone with
M. L'Ambassadeur. Do not let it occur again, M. de Putange!"

The equerry bowed in silence. His itching fingers fell away from his
sword-hilt, and he breathed more freely. He had no illusions as to
what must have happened. But he was relieved there were to be no
complications. The others now coming up with them, the party thereafter
kept together until presently Buckingham and Lord Holland took their
leave.

On the morrow the last stage of the escorting journey was accomplished.
A little way beyond Amiens the Court took its leave of Henrietta Maria,
entrusting her now to Buckingham and his followers, who were to convey
her safely to Charles.

It was a very contrite and