sensual Louis, why not she? This heart had once been all her own,
and why should not she, who combined the beauty of one mistress with
the shrewdness of the other, dispossess them both, and re-enter into
possession of her old domains?

She smiled again, and saw how well her smiles became her. "Yes,"
said she to herself, "yes, I will recall this truant merlin, and he
shall return to perch upon the hand he used to love! I will be
mistress of his heart and mistress of his realms. She foretold it
all, and gave me the charm wherewith to work the spell."

But as she gave utterance to these last words, her lips began to
quiver, and her fine features were distorted by some sudden pain.
She had just called to mind the fearful intelligence of La Voisin's
arrest.

"Great God! If my letters should have been found among her papers!
What, oh what would be MY fate?"

She shuddered--and in place of the triumphant vision of a heart
recaptured, a monarch at her feet, there arose the fearful spectacle
of an execution which, four years before, she had witnessed at the
bloody Place de Greve. Once more she saw the square, black with a
mass of human beings, who, jeering, shouting, and cursing, moved
hither and thither like the waves of a turbulent ocean; at every
window that looked out upon the place, she saw gayly-dressed ladies
who peered anxiously out to catch a glimpse of one gloomy object
that loomed darkly up from its centre. She saw the crowd give way
and part, as, keeping pace with the dull sound of a muffled drum, a
sad procession entered upon the scene. At its head marched a