jealous apprehensions, Marguerite led
him to the bedchamber, and there paused.

"Well," she said, "are you satisfied, duke?"

"Satisfied, madame?" was the reply, "and with what?"

"Of the proof I give you," retorted Marguerite, with a slight tone of
vexation in her voice, "that I belong to a man who, on the very night of
his marriage, makes me of such small importance that he does not even
come to thank me for the honor I have done him, not in selecting, but in
accepting him for my husband."

"Oh! madame," said the duke, sorrowfully, "be assured he will come if
you desire it."

"And do you say that, Henry?" cried Marguerite; "you, who better than
any know the contrary of what you say? If I had that desire, should I
have asked you to come to the Louvre?"

"You have asked me to come to the Louvre, Marguerite, because you are
anxious to destroy every vestige of our past, and because that past
lives not only in my memory, but in this silver casket which I bring to
you."

"Henry, shall I say one thing to you?" replied Marguerite, gazing
earnestly at the duke; "it is that you are more like a schoolboy than a
prince. I deny that I have loved you! I desire to quench a flame which
will die, perhaps, but the reflection of which will never die! For the
loves of persons of my rank illumine and frequently devour the whole
epoch contemporary with them. No, no, duke; you may keep the letters of
your Marguerite, and the casket she has given you. She asks but one of
these letters, and that only because it is as dangerous for you as for
herself."

"It is all yours," said the duke. "Take the one that you wish to
destroy."

Marguerite searched anxiously in the open casket, and with a tremulous
hand took, one after the other, a dozen letters, only the addresses of
which she examined, as if by merely glancing at these she could recall
to her memory what the letters themselves contained; but after a close
scrutiny she looked at the duke, pale and agitated.

"Sir," she said, "what I seek is not here. Can you have lost it, by any
accident? for if it should fall into the hands of"--

"What letter do you seek, madame?"

"That in which I told you to marry without delay."

"As an excuse for your infidelity?"

Marguerite shrugged her shoulders.

"No; but to save your life. The one in which I told you that the king,
seeing our love and my exertions to break off your proposed marriage
with the Infanta of Portugal, had sent for his