No woman that ever lived—save, perhaps, Mary of Scotland, who was not more lovely in her person than this unhappy Queen of France—could better have performed the task before her. She was still beautiful. What she had lost of youth came back to her in the dignity and assured grace of ripe womanhood. The necessities of her life had brought tact and keen perception with them. But she knew that all these qualities would be strained to their utmost. The man she had to deal with was brilliant, keen, unprincipled; but she knew that with such men there is sometimes a feeling of chivalric devotion where women are concerned, which, once enlisted, amounts to honor. These were the thoughts that made Marie Antoinette so earnest and so restless. She hated the task allotted her, but for that reason was the more resolved to accomplish it. Her dignity as a queen, and her supremacy with the sex, demanded it. “Yes, I must go now,” she said, drawing a shawl of black lace, which her lady brought, over her head and shoulders. “It will not be prudent to keep this man waiting. Ah! it is hard when the Queen of France is brought to this. Wait for me, and watch that no one follows.” “How beautiful you are!” said the confidant, as she arranged the shawl. “I never saw a finer flush of roses on your cheeks!” “It is the shame breaking out from my heart,—shame that my mother’s child should be so humbled.” Perhaps it was; but the woman was triumphing in her talent and her beauty all the time, else why had she put on that exquisite robe, with its silken shimmer of greenish gold, or arranged the black lace so exquisitely over the red roses on her bosom? She had made many conquests in her life; but never that of a human animal, so brilliant in his coarseness as this Count Mirabeau. Away in the park was a little temple, or a summer-house, in which members of the royal family, sometimes, rested themselves after a fatiguing walk. It had been arranged that the count should await the royal lady in this pretty building. Marie Antoinette walked away from the palace so quietly that no one of the household heeded her departure, for it had always been her habit to walk alone, or with attendants, in the Park of Versailles and St. Cloud, as the caprice might come upon her. So she sauntered on quietly enough while the palace was in sight; but the moment it was shut out by the trees, her step became rapid, her breath came quickly, and she moved forward in vivid excitement, as if preparing herself for an encounter with some splendid wild animal. CHAPTER LXX. ENEMIES RECONCILED.