Queen. For that, Buckingham, in his self-sufficiency and
arrogance, appears to have cared nothing. One suspects that it
would have pleased his vanity to have his name linked with the
Queen's by the lips of scandal.

She found her tongue at last.

"Monsieur le Duc," she said in her confusion, "it was not
necessary, it was not worth while, to have asked audience of me
for this. You have leave to go."

He looked up in doubt, and saw only confusion; attributed it
perhaps to the presence of that third party to which himself he
had been so indifferent. He kissed the coverlet again, stumbled
to his feet, and reached the door. Thence he sent her a flaming
glance of his bold eyes, and hand on heart--

"Adieu, madame!" said he in tragic tones, and so departed.

Madame de Lannoi was discreet, and related at the time nothing of
what had passed at that interview. But that the interview itself
had taken place under such conditions was enough to set the
tongue of gossip wagging. An echo of it reached the King,
together with the story of that other business in the garden, and
he was glad to know that the Duke of Buckingham was back in
London. Richelieu, to vent his own malice against the Queen,
sought to feed the King's suspicions.

"Why did she cry out, sire?" he will have asked. "What did M. de
Buckingham do to make her cry out?"