nurse's rooms.

Marguerite's pallor, her haggard eyes and oppressed breathing betrayed
the most violent emotion.

"Oh, sire! sire!" she exclaimed, rushing to her brother's bedside; "you
know that she lies."

"She? Who?" asked Charles.

"Listen, Charles, it is a terrible thing to accuse one's mother; but I
suspected that she remained with you to persecute them again. But, on my
life, on yours, on our souls, I tell you what she says is false!"

"To persecute them! Whom is she persecuting?"

Both had instinctively lowered their voices; it seemed as if they
themselves feared even to hear them.

"Henry, in the first place; your Henriot, who loves you, who is more
devoted to you than any one else."

"You think so, Margot?" said Charles.

"Oh! sire, I am sure of it."

"Well, so am I," said Charles.

"Then if you are sure of it, brother," said Marguerite, surprised, "why
did you have him arrested and taken to Vincennes?"

"Because he asked me to do so."

"He asked you, sire?"

"Yes, Henriot has singular ideas. Perhaps he is wrong, perhaps right; at
any rate, one of his ideas was that he would be safer in disgrace than
in favor, away from me at Vincennes instead of near me in the Louvre."

"Ah! I see," said Marguerite, "and is he safe there?"

"As safe as a man can be whose head Beaulieu answers for with his own."

"Oh! thank you, brother! so much for Henry. But"--

"But what?"

"There is another, sire, in whom perhaps I am wrong to be interested,
but"--

"Who is it?"

"Sire, spare me. I would scarcely dare name him to my brother, much less
to my King."

"Monsieur de la Mole, is it not?" said Charles.

"Alas!" said Marguerite, "you tried to kill him once, sire, and he
escaped from your royal vengeance only by a miracle."

"He was guilty of only one crime then, Marguerite; now he has committed
two."

"Sire, he is not guilty of the second."

"But," said Charles, "did you not hear what our good mother said, my
poor Margot?"

"Oh, I have already told you, Charles," said Marguerite, lowering her
voice, "that what she said was false."

"You do not know perhaps that a waxen figure has been found in Monsieur
de la Mole's rooms?"

"Yes, yes, brother, I know it."

"That this figure is pierced to the heart by a needle, and that it bears
a tag with an 'M' on it?"

"I know that, too."

"And that over the shoulders of the figure is a royal mantle, and that
on its head is a royal crown?"

"I know