“Yes, sire.”  De Catinat raised his sword in salute, and started upon his mission.

The king passed on down the corridor, and opened a door which led him into a magnificent ante-room, all one blaze of mirrors and gold, furnished to a marvel with the most delicate ebony and silver suite, on a deep red carpet of Aleppo, as soft and yielding 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 from him with an angry gesture.

“All is over forever between us,” he cried harshly.  “Your brother will await you at the east gate at six o’clock, and it is my command that you wait there until you receive my further orders.”