“And you can believe,” the King cried, “that a Prince of the House of Rohan, however pressed for money, could—Oh, it is unimaginable!”
“Yet has he not stolen my name?” the Queen cut in. “Is he not proven a common, stupid forger?”
“We have not heard him,” the King reminded her gently.
“And His Eminence might be able to explain,” ventured Miromesnil. “It were certainly prudent to give him the opportunity.”
Slowly the King nodded his great, powdered head. “Go and find him. Bring him at once!” he bade Breteuil; and Breteuil bowed and departed.
Very soon he returned, and he held the door whilst the handsome Cardinal, little dreaming what lay before him, serene and calm, a commanding figure in his cassock of scarlet watered silk, rustled forward into the royal presence, and so came face to face with the Queen for the first time since that romantic night a year ago in the Grove of Venus.
Abruptly the King launched his thunderbolt.
“Cousin,” he asked, “what purchase is this of a diamond necklace that you are said to have made in the Queen's name?”
King and Cardinal looked into each other's eyes, the King's narrowing, the Cardinal's dilating, the King leaning forward in his chair, elbows on the table, the Cardinal standing tense and suddenly rigid.
Slowly the colour ebbed from Rohan's face, leaving it deathly pale. His eyes sought the Queen, and found her contemptuous glance, her curling lip. Then at last his handsome head sank a little forward.