Navarre paced her room. Then making another sign to the
unhappy girl to rise and remain, she took a whistle lying on a table,
and whistled to call those without.

The hangings of the door were parted. But instead of one of her
attendant ladies, it was the calm imposing form of Catherine de Medicis
that entered the apartment.

Margaret started back as if she had seen a spectre.

"My mother!" burst involuntarily from her lips in a tone of alarm; for
she divined, by rapid instinct, that such a visit could bode naught but
evil.

The Queen-mother cast a searching glance over the two agitated females,
and smiled as if, with that quickness of intelligence which
characterised her cunning mind, she had discovered at once the meaning
of the scene before her. With an imperious wave of the hand she
signified her desire that the damsel should leave the room, since she
would speak with her daughter. In spite of her agitation and distress,
Margaret of Valois, with that implicit obedience to her mother's will
which, in common with all the children of Catherine de Medicis, (except
the unhappy Charles in the latter years of his hardly wrought and dearly
paid emancipation from her authority,) she never ventured to refuse. She
bid Jocelyne leave them; and the fair girl retired with trembling steps
and sinking heart. The apparition of the Queen-mother had appalled her.

Catherine motioned to her daughter to be seated on a low stool, and
taking herself a high-backed chair, smiled with her usual bland and
treacherous smile.

"You seem agitated, Margaret, _ma mie_," commenced the Queen-mother,
after a due pause. "I have come to condole and sympathise with you in
your distress. Much as I may have blamed your misplaced and unbecoming
attachment to an obscure courtier, almost an adventurer in this palace,
I cannot but feel that you must suffer from the discovery of the utter
baseness of this man. Look not thus surprised. I see you have already
learned his arrest--your whole manner betrays it."

"You speak of ----," stammered Margaret, trembling.

"I speak of Philip de la Mole," said the Queen coldly.

"It is true, then?" pursued her daughter. "He is arrested on a charge of
treason. Oh, no! It cannot be! He is innocent!"

"He is guilty!" said Catherine coldly. "I have evidence the most
incontrovertible, that he has conspired against the life of the king,
your brother, by the foulest acts of sorcery. A wax figure, fashioned as
a king,