"Madame, madame, your highness is forgetting your mask!" said her vigilant companion.
"Pick it up," replied her mistress, as she tottered almost senseless toward the staircase, and as the street-door had been left only half closed, the two women, light as birds, passed through it, and with hurried steps returned to the palace. One of them ascended toward Madame's apartments, where she disappeared; the other entered the room belonging to the maids of honor, namely, on the _entresol_, and having reached her own room, she sat down before a table, and without giving herself time even to breathe, wrote the following letter:
"This evening Madame has been to see M. de Guiche. Everything is going on well on this side. See that yours is the same, and do not forget to burn this paper."
She then folded the letter in a long thin form, and leaving her room with every possible precaution, crossed a corridor which led to the apartments appropriated to the gentlemen attached to Monsieur's service. She stopped before a door, under which, having previously knocked twice in a short quick manner, she thrust the paper, and fled. Then, returning to her own room, she removed every trace of her having gone out, and also of having written the letter. Amid the investigations she was so diligently pursuing she perceived on the table the mask which belonged to Madame, and which, according to her mistress's directions, she had brought back, but had forgotten to restore to her. "Oh! oh!" she said, "I must not forget to do to-morrow what I have forgotten to do to-day."
And she took hold of the velvet mask by that part of it which covered the cheeks, and feeling that her thumb was wet, she looked at it. It was not only wet, but reddened. The mask had fallen upon one of the spots of blood which, we have already said, stained the floor, and from the black velvet outside, which had accidentally come into contact with it, the blood had passed through to the inside and stained the white cambric lining. "Oh! oh!" said Montalais, for doubtless our readers have already recognized her by these various maneuvers, "I shall not give her back her mask, it is far too precious now."
And rising from her seat, she ran toward a box made of maple wood, which inclosed different articles of toilet and perfumery. "No, not here," she said, "such a treasure must not be abandoned to the slightest chance of detection."