"One word, if you please, Madame De Lisle," he exclaimed, in an eager, agitated voice.
She paused a moment and clung tremblingly to the arm of her attendant.
"That is impossible to-night, sir," she answered in a low, constrained voice. "Call on me to-morrow at noon. I will hear you then."
Without another word she turned and fled up the steps. He stood looking at her blankly a moment, then re-entered his cab and was driven away. He did not notice the heavily-draped figure of a woman that had stood almost at his elbow, and that now ran lightly up the hotel steps, into the wide, lighted hall.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
La Reine Blanche went directly to her dressing-room, where her maid divested her of her heavy wrappings and out-door costume, and substituted a dressing-gown of white Turkish silk confined at the waist by gold cord and tassels. Then she took down the burnished golden hair, and prepared to brush and plait it for the night.
As she took up the pearl-handled brush there came a timid, hesitating rap at the outer door. Madame De Lisle started and trembled.
"Admit no one to-night, Elsie," she said, nervously, as the maid turned toward the door.
Elsie came back in a minute with a penciled slip of paper. Her mistress took it, and read these words: