confess his own action in the matter to the Queen, once she was again
within his influence. She had forgiven him more than that in the past,
when he had made his own mad devotion to herself excuse for his rashness
or misconduct.

He waited opportunity, he arranged all details carefully, he secured the
passive agents of his purpose; and when the right day came he acted.

About ten o'clock one night, a half-hour before the closing of the palace
gates, when no one could go in or go out save by permit of the Lord
Chamberlain, a footman from a surgeon of the palace came to Angele,
bearing a note which read:

"Your friend is very ill, and asks for you. Come hither alone; and
now, if you would come at all."

Her father was confined to bed with some ailment of the hour, and asleep
--it were no good to awaken him. Her mind was at once made up. There
was no time to ask permission of the Queen. She knew the surgeon's
messengers by sight, this one was in the usual livery, and his master's
name was duly signed. In haste she made herself ready, and went forth
into the night with the messenger, her heart beating hard, a pitiful
anxiety shaking her. Her steps were fleet between the lodge and the
palace. They were challenged nowhere, and the surgeon's servant,
entering a side door of the palace, led her hastily through gloomy halls
and passages where they met no one, though once in a dark corridor some
one brushed against her. She wondered why there were no servants to show
the way, why the footman carried no torch or candle; but haste and
urgency seemed due excuse, and she thought only of Michel, and that she
would soon see him-dying, dead perhaps before she could touch his hand!