"Since you tell me that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye is content to remain here, I am satisfied that it is so." They were the very words that she desired to hear from him; yet his manner of uttering them gave her little reassurance.

The smile on her lips was forced; her watchful eyes smiled not at all.
"Still," he continued, "you will be so good as to remember that I am not my own master in this affair.

Were that so, I should not fail to relieve you at once of my unbidden presence." "Oh, monsieur--" "But, being the Queen's emissary, I have her orders to obey, and those orders are to convey Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to Paris.

They make no allowance for any change that may have occurred in mademoiselle's inclinations.

If the journey is now distasteful to her, she has but her own rashness to blame in having sought it herself.