Madame fell on her side again; her sufferings were horrible. She opened her eyes from a swoon of anguish to see her husband holding back the bed curtains and looking down at her.
She spoke, panting from the pillow.
“Ah, Monsieur!–you have ceased to love me–a long while now–but I–I have never deceived you.”
He turned away without a word.
She lay now on her back exhausted; the curtains were drawn so that she was enclosed in her bed. Her sick eyes traced the pattern on the canopy above her; she heard her ladies whispering.
She thought of de Guiche smuggled into her apartments under the guise of a fortune-teller, of his letters–three, four a day–when she was last sick; she thought of Marsillac, of de Vardes, of M. de Lorraine and of the King—
She thought of the King’s brother, her husband, of how she had angered, flouted, wounded him, of how she had laughed at him.
All at once she sat up and dragged the curtains apart.
“Look to that water I drank,” she gasped. “I am poisoned!” As she spoke she saw that Monsieur was still in her chamber, and she seemed confused. “They mistook one bottle for another,” she said, and fell down again in the bed.