Has any one annoyed you ?" "No, no, sire." "I insist upon knowing if such really be the case," said the prince, his eyes sparkling.
"No one, sire, no one has in any way offended me." "In that case, pray resume your gentle air of gayety, or that sweet melancholy look which I so loved in you this morning; for pity's sake, do so." "Yes, sire, yes." The king tapped the floor impatiently with his foot, saying, "Such a change is positively inexplicable." And he looked at Saint-Aignan, who had also remarked La Valliere's peculiar lethargy, as well as the king's impatience.
It was futile for the king to entreat, and as useless for him to try to overcome her depression: the poor girl was completely overwhelmed,--the appearance of an angel would hardly have awakened her from her torpor.
The king saw in her repeated negative replies a mystery full of unkindness; he began to look round the apartment with a suspicious air.
There happened to be in La Valliere's room a miniature of Athos.
The king remarked that this portrait bore a strong resemblance to Bragelonne, for it had been taken when the count was quite a young man.
He looked at it with a threatening air.

La Valliere, in her misery far indeed from thinking of this portrait, could not conjecture the cause of the king's preoccupation.

And yet the king's mind was occupied with a terrible remembrance, which had more than once taken possession of his mind, but which he had always driven away.

He recalled the intimacy existing between the two young people from their birth, their engagement, and that Athos himself had come to solicit La Valliere's hand for Raoul.

He therefore could not but suppose that on her return to Paris, La Valliere had found news from London awaiting her, and that this news had counterbalanced the influence he had been enabled to exert over her.