o-morrow. Or, it may be--earlier."

She did not answer, and "Tavannes!" the King repeated with violence.
"Tavannes! Mordieu!" his Majesty continued, looking round furiously.
"Will no one fetch him? Sacre nom, am I King, or a dog of a--"

"I come, sire!" the Count cried hastily. For Charles, King of France,
Ninth of the name, was none of the most patient; and scarce another in
the Court would have ventured to keep him waiting so long. "I come,
sire; I come!" Tavannes repeated, as he moved from Mademoiselle's side.

He shouldered his way through the circle of courtiers, who barred the
road to the presence, and in part hid her from observation. He pushed
past the table at which Charles and the Comte de Rochefoucauld had been
playing primero, and at which the latter still sat, trifling idly with
the cards. Three more paces, and he reached the King, who stood in the
_ruelle_ with Rambouillet and the Italian Marshal. It was the latter
who, a moment before, had summoned his Majesty from his game.

Mademoiselle, watching him go, saw so much; so much, and the King's
roving eyes and haggard face, and the four figures, posed apart in the
fuller light of the upper half of the Chamber. Then the circle of
courtiers came together before her, and she sat back on her stool. A
fluttering, long-drawn sigh escaped her. Now, if she could slip out and
make her escape! Now--she looked round. She was not far from the door;
to withdraw seemed easy. But a staring, whispering knot of gentlemen and
pages blocked the way; and the girl, ignorant of the etiquette of the
Court, and with no more than a week's experience of Paris, had not the
courage to rise and pass alone through the group.

She had come to the Louvre this Saturday evening under the wing of Madame
d'Yverne, her _fiance's_ cousin. By ill-hap Madame had been summoned to
the Princess Dowager's closet, and perforce had left her. Still,
Mademoiselle had her betrothed, and in his charge had sat herself down to
wait, nothing loth, in the great gallery, where all was bustle and gaiety
and entertainment. For this, the seventh day of the fetes, held to
celebrate the marriage of the King of Navarre and Charles's sister--a
marriage which was to reconcile the two factions of the Huguenots and the
Catholics, so long at war--saw the Louvre as gay, as full, and as lively
as the first of the fete days had found it; and in the humours of the
throng, in the ceaseless passage of masks