ehind him. Had
his eye been more curious as he and his half-fainting brother bowed
before passing through the door, it might have seen that which he must
long have borne in memory.

Mary Connynge, trembling, pallid, utterly broken, never found her way
back to the right hand of the regent. She half stumbled into a chair
near the foot of the table. Her bosom fluttered at the base of the
throat. Half blindly she reached out her hand toward a glass of wine
which stood near by, foaming and sparkling, its gem-like drops of keen
pungency swimming continuously up to the surface. Her hand caught at the
slender stem of the glass. Leaning upon her left arm, she half rose as
though to put it to her lips. Her head moved, as though she would follow
the retreating figure of the man who had thus scornfully used her. All
at once, slowly, and then with a sudden crash, she sank down upon her
seat and fell forward across the table. The fragile glass snapped in her
fingers. The amber wine rushed in swift flood across the linen. In the
broadening stain there fell and lay blazing the great gem of France.

CHAPTER IX

THE NEWS

"Lady Kitty! Lady Kitty! Have you heard the news?"

Thus, breathless, the Countess of Warrington, Lady Catharine's English
neighbor in exile, who burst into the drawing-room early in the morning,
not waiting for announcement of her presence.

"Nay, not yet, my dear," said Lady Catharine, advancing and embracing
her. "What is it, pray? Has the poodle swallowed a bone, or the baby
perhaps cut another tooth? And, forsooth, how is the little one?"

Lady Emily Warrington, slender, elegant, well clad, and for the most
part languorously calm, was in a state of excitement quite without her
customary _aplomb_. She sank into a seat, fanning herself with a vigor
which threatened ruin to the precious slats of a fan which bore the
handiwork of Watteau.

"The streets are full of it," said she. "Have you not heard, really?"

"I must say, not yet. But what is it?"

"Why, the quarrel between the regent and his director-general, Mr.
Law."

"No, I have not heard of it." Lady Catharine sought refuge behind her
own fan. "But tell me" she continued.

"But that is not all. 'Twas the reason for the quarrel. Paris is all
agog. 'Twas about a woman!"

"You mean--there was--a woman?"

"Yes, it all happened last night, at the Palais Royal. The woman is
dead--died last night. 'Tis said she fell in a fit at the very
table--