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 nor 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! At last they emerged into a lighter and larger hall-way, where her guide suddenly paused, and said to Angèle, motioning towards a door: “Enter. He is there.” For a moment she stood still, scarce able to breathe, her heart hurt her so. It seemed to her as if life itself was arrested. As the servant, without further words, turned and left her, she knocked, opened the door without awaiting a reply, and, stepping into semidarkness, said, softly: “Michel! Michel!” XVII At Angèle’s entrance a form slowly raised itself on a couch, and a voice, not Michel’s, said: “Mademoiselle--by our Lady, ’tis she!” It was the voice of the Seigneur of Rozel, and Angèle started back, amazed. “You, monsieur--you!” she gasped. “It was you that sent for me?” “Send? Not I--I have not lost my manners yet. Rozel at court is no greater fool than Lemprière in Jersey.” Angèle wrung her hands. “I thought it De la Forêt who was ill. The surgeon said to come quickly.” Lemprière braced himself against the wall, for he was weak and his fever still high. “Ill?--not he! As sound in body and soul as any man in England. That is a friend, that De la Forêt lover of yours, or I’m no butler to the Queen. He gets leave and brings me here, and coaxes me back to life again--with not a wink of sleep for him these five days past till now.” Angèle had drawn nearer, and now stood beside the couch, trembling and fearful, for it came to her mind that she had been made the victim of some foul device. The letter had read: “_Your friend is ill._” True, the seigneur was her friend, but he had not sent for her. “Where is De la Forêt?” she asked, quickly. “Yonder, asleep,” said the seigneur, pointing to a curtain which divided the room from one adjoining.