The hangings of the door were parted. But instead of one of her attendant ladies, it was the calm imposing form of Catherine de Medicis that entered the apartment.
Margaret started back as if she had seen a spectre.
"My mother!" burst involuntarily from her lips in a tone of alarm; for she divined, by rapid instinct, that such a visit could bode naught but evil.
The Queen-mother cast a searching glance over the two agitated females, and smiled as if, with that quickness of intelligence which characterised her cunning mind, she had discovered at once the meaning of the scene before her. With an imperious wave of the hand she signified her desire that the damsel should leave the room, since she would speak with her daughter. In spite of her agitation and distress, Margaret of Valois, with that implicit obedience to her mother's will which, in common with all the children of Catherine de Medicis, (except the unhappy Charles in the latter years of his hardly wrought and dearly paid emancipation from her authority,) she never ventured to refuse. She bid Jocelyne leave them; and the fair girl retired with trembling steps and sinking heart. The apparition of the Queen-mother had appalled her.
Catherine motioned to her daughter to be seated on a low stool, and taking herself a high-backed chair, smiled with her usual bland and treacherous smile.
"You seem agitated, Margaret, ma mie," commenced the Queen-mother, after a due pause. "I have come to condole and sympathise with you in your distress. Much as I may have blamed your misplaced and unbecoming attachment to an obscure courtier, almost an adventurer in this palace, I cannot but feel that you must suffer from the discovery of the utter baseness of this man. Look not thus surprised. I see you have already learned his arrest—your whole manner betrays it."
"You speak of ——," stammered Margaret, trembling.
"I speak of Philip de la Mole," said the Queen coldly.
"It is true, then?" pursued her daughter. "He is arrested on a charge of treason. Oh, no! It cannot be! He is innocent!"
"He is guilty!" said Catherine coldly. "I have evidence the most incontrovertible, that he has conspired against the life of the king, your brother, by the foulest acts of sorcery. A wax figure, fashioned as a king, pierced to the heart by his very hand, has been laid before me. Your brother's illness, his mortal pains, his malady so incomprehensible, all declare that the hellish deed has but too much succeeded up to this hour."