ielding as the moss of a
forest. In keeping with the furniture was the sole occupant of this
stately chamber--a little negro boy in a livery of velvet picked out
with silver tinsel, who stood as motionless as a small swart statuette
against the door which faced that through which the king entered.

"Is your mistress there?"

"She has just returned, sire."

"I wish to see her."

"Pardon, sire, but she--"

"Is everyone to thwart me to-day?" snarled the king, and taking the
little page by his velvet collar, he hurled him to the other side of the
room. Then, without knocking, he opened the door, and passed on into
the lady's boudoir.

It was a large and lofty room, very different to that from which he had
just come. Three long windows from ceiling to floor took up one side,
and through the delicate pink-tinted blinds the evening sun cast a
subdued and dainty light. Great gold candelabra glittered between the
mirrors upon the wall, and Le Brun had expended all his wealth of
colouring upon the ceiling, where Louis himself, in the character of
Jove, hurled down his thunder-bolts upon a writhing heap of Dutch and
Palatine Titans. Pink was the prevailing tone in tapestry, carpet, and
furniture, so that the whole room seemed to shine with the sweet tints
of the inner side of a shell, and when lit up, as it was then, formed
such a chamber as some fairy hero might have built up for his princess.
At the further side, prone upon an ottoman, her face buried in the
cushion, her beautiful white arms thrown over it, the rich coils of her
brown hair hanging in disorder across the long curve of her ivory neck,
lay, like a drooping flower, the woman whom he had come to discard.

At the sound of the closing door she had glanced up, and then, at the
sight of the king, she sprang to her feet and ran towards him, her hands
out, her blue eyes bedimmed with tears, her whole beautiful figure
softening into womanliness and humility.

"Ah, sire," she cried, with a pretty little sunburst of joy through her
tears, "then I have wronged you! I have wronged you cruelly! You have
kept your promise. You were but trying my faith! Oh, how could I have
said such words to you--how could I pain that noble heart! But you have
come after me to tell me that you have forgiven me!" She put her arms
forward with the trusting air of a pretty child who claims an embrace as
her due, but the king stepped swiftly back from her, and warned her away
fro