'No! No!' protested Gilles quickly.
'Then, what is it?' she queried. 'Speak, man, or I die of terror!'
'Monseigneur le Duc d'Anjou did not go to Cambray last night, your Majesty,' said Gilles quietly.
Marguerite frowned. She did not understand. The news now appeared trivial after what she had feared.
'Not gone to Cambray?' she said slowly. 'But I saw him go—with you, Messire.'
'We started together, your Majesty, and rode together as far as Noyon. Then Monseigneur went on his way and I returned hither.'
'Monseigneur went on his way? What do you mean? And why did you go to Noyon, which is not on the way to Cambray?'
Gilles de Crohin sighed with impatience. But for his respect for the exalted lady, he would have thought her strangely dull-witted to-day.
'Monseigneur did not go to Cambray,' he reiterated slowly, like one who is trying to infuse a lesson into the mind of a doltish child. 'He hath gone to Paris, on his way to some spot unknown to any one—certainly unknown to me. He will be absent weeks—perhaps months. He desired your Majesty to try and conciliate Monseigneur le Baron d'Inchy and the other Flemish lords as best you can.'
Marguerite of Navarre listened to Gilles until the end. Slowly, very slowly, the perception of what had happened penetrated into her brain. Her eyes were fixed upon him, glowing with an intense inward fire. Gradually her breath came and went with ever-increasing rapidity. Her left hand, which rested on the arm of her chair, gripped the carving with a more and more convulsive clutch. Then suddenly, without a cry or warning, her right hand fastened on a heavy, unloaded pistol which lay, carelessly flung aside, upon the table close to her, and she flung it at Gilles de Crohin's head.