She took him, still half-resisting, by the hand, and in silence
led him, despite his reluctance, back by the way he had so lately
come. Outside her rival's door she left him, but she paused at
the end of the gallery to make sure that he had entered.

Within he found himself confronted by several of Miss Stewart's
chambermaids, who respectfully barred his way, one of them
informing him scarcely above a whisper that her mistress had been
very ill since his Majesty left, but that, being gone to bed, she
was, God be thanked, in a very fine sleep.

"That I must see," said the King. And, since one of the women
placed herself before the door of the inner room, his Majesty
unceremoniously took her by the shoulders and put her aside.

He thrust open the door, and stepped without further ceremony
into the well-lighted bedroom. Miss Stewart occupied the
handsome, canopied bed. But far from being as he had been told,
in "a very fine sleep," she was sitting up; and far from
presenting an ailing appearance, she looked radiantly well and
very lovely in her diaphanous sleeping toilet, with golden
ringlets in distracting disarray Nor was she alone. By her pillow
sat one who, if at first to be presumed her physician, proved
upon scrutiny to be the Duke of Richmond.

The King's swarthy face turned a variety of colours, his languid
eyes lost all trace of languor. Those who knew his nature might
have expected that he would now deliver himself with that
sneering sarcasm, that indolent cynicism, which he used upon