XXXVII. ARRIVAL OF PIERRE PHILIBERT…

XXXVII. ARRIVAL OF PIERRE PHILIBERT

Dinner at the table of the Count de la Galissonière was not a dull affair of mere eating and drinking. The conversation and sprightliness of the host fed the minds of his guests as generously as his bread strengthened their hearts, or his wine, in the Psalmist's words, made their faces to shine. Men were they, every one of them possessed of a sound mind in a sound body; and both were well feasted at this hospitable table.

The dishes were despatched in a leisurely and orderly manner, as became men who knew the value of both soul and body, and sacrificed neither to the other. When the cloth was drawn, and the wine-flasks glittered ruby and golden upon the polished board, the old butler came in, bearing upon a tray a large silver box of tobacco, with pipes and stoppers and a wax candle burning, ready to light them, as then the fashion was in companies composed exclusively of gentlemen. He placed the materials for smoking upon the table as reverently as a priest places his biretta upon the altar,--for the old butler did himself dearly love the Indian weed, and delighted to smell the perfume of it as it rose in clouds over his master's table.

“This is a bachelors' banquet, gentlemen,” said the Governor, filling a pipe to the brim. “We will take fair advantage of the absence of ladies to-day, and offer incense to the good Manitou who first gave tobacco for the solace of mankind.”

The gentlemen were all, as it chanced, honest smokers. Each one took a pipe from the stand and followed the Governor's example, except Peter Kalm, who, more philosophically, carried his pipe with him--a huge meerschaum, clouded like a sunset on the Baltic. He filled it deliberately with tobacco, pressed it down with his finger and thumb, and leaning back in his easy chair after lighting it, began to blow such a cloud as the portly Burgomaster of Stockholm might have envied on a grand council night in the old Raadhus of the city of the Goths.

They were a goodly group of men, whose frank, loyal eyes looked openly at each other across the hospitable table. None of them but had travelled farther than Ulysses, and, like him, had seen strange cities and observed many minds of men, and was as deeply read in the book of human experience as ever the crafty king of Ithaca.

The event of the afternoon--the reading of the royal despatches--had somewhat dashed the spirits of the councillors, for they saw clearly the drift of events which was sweeping New France out of the lap of her mother country, unless her policy were totally changed and the hour of need brought forth a man capable of saving France herself and her faithful and imperilled colonies.

“Hark!” exclaimed the Bishop, lifting his hand, “the Angelus is ringing from tower and belfry, and thousands of knees are bending with the simplicity of little children in prayer, without one thought of theology or philosophy. Every prayer rising from a sincere heart, asking pardon for the past and grace for the future, is heard by our Father in heaven; think you not it is so, Herr Kalm?”

The sad foreboding of colonists like La Corne St. Luc did not prevent the desperate struggle that was made for the preservation of French dominion in the next war. Like brave and loyal men, they did their duty to God and their country, preferring death and ruin in a lost cause to surrendering the flag which was the symbol of their native land. The spirit, if not the words, of the old English loyalist was in them:

“For loyalty is still the same, Whether it win or lose the game; True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shone upon.”

New France, after gathering a harvest of glory such as America had never seen reaped before, fell at last, through the neglect of her mother country. But she dragged down the nation in her fall, and France would now give the apple of her eye for the recovery, never to be, of “the acres of snow” which La Pompadour so scornfully abandoned to the English.

These considerations lay in the lap of the future, however; they troubled not the present time and company. The glasses were again replenished with wine or watered, as the case might be, for the Count de la Galissonière and Herr Kalm kept Horatian time and measure, drinking only three cups to the Graces, while La Corne St. Luc and Rigaud de Vaudreuil drank nine full cups to the Muses, fearing not the enemy that steals away men's brains. Their heads were helmeted with triple brass, and impenetrable to the heaviest blows of the thyrsus of Bacchus. They drank with impunity, as if garlanded with parsley, and while commending the Bishop, who would drink naught save pure water, they rallied gaily Claude Beauharnais, who would not drink at all.

In the midst of a cheerful concert of merriment, the door of the cabinet opened, and the servant in waiting announced the entrance of Colonel Philibert.

All rose to welcome him. Pierre looked anxious and somewhat discomposed, but the warm grasp of the hands of so many true friends made him glad for the moment.

“Why, Pierre!” exclaimed the Count, “I hope no ill wind has blown you to the city so unexpectedly! You are heartily welcome, however, and we will call every wind good that blows our friends back to us again.”

“It is a cursed wind that blows me back to-day,” replied Philibert, sitting down with an air of disquiet.

“Why, what is the matter, Pierre?” asked the Count. “My honored Lady de Tilly and her lovely niece, are they well?”

“Well, your Excellency, but sorely troubled. The devil has tempted Le Gardeur again, and he has fallen. He is back to the city, wild as a savage and beyond all control.”

“Good God! it will break his sister's heart,” said the Governor, sympathizingly. “That girl would give her life for her brother. I feel for her; I feel for you, too, Pierre.” Philibert felt the tight clasp of the Governor's hand as he said this. He understood well its meaning. “And not less do I pity the unhappy youth who is the cause of such grief to his friends,” continued he.

“Yes, your Excellency, Le Gardeur is to be pitied, as well as blamed. He has been tried and tempted beyond human strength.”

La Corne St. Luc had risen, and was pacing the floor with impatient strides. “Pierre Philibert!” exclaimed he, “where is the poor lad? He must be sought for and saved yet. What demons have assailed him now? Was it the serpent of strong drink, that bites men mad, or the legion of fiends that rattle the dice-box in their ears? Or was it the last temptation, which never fails when all else has been tried in vain--a woman?”

“It was all three combined. The Chevalier de Pean visited Tilly on business of the Intendant--in reality, I suspect, to open a communication with Le Gardeur, for he brought him a message from a lady you wot of, which drove him wild with excitement. A hundred men could not have restrained Le Gardeur after that. He became infatuated with De Pean, and drank and gambled all night and all day with him at the village inn, threatening annihilation to all who interfered with him. Today he suddenly left Tilly, and has come with De Pean to the city.”

“De Pean!” exclaimed La Corne, “the spotted snake! A fit tool for the Intendant's lies and villainy! I am convinced he went not on his own errand to Tilly. Bigot is at the bottom of this foul conspiracy to ruin the noblest lad in the Colony.”

“It may be,” replied Philibert, “but the Intendant alone would have had no power to lure him back. It was the message of that artful siren which has drawn Le Gardeur de Repentigny again into the whirlpool of destruction.”

“Aye, but Bigot set her on him, like a retriever, to bring back the game!” replied La Corne, fully convinced of the truth of his opinion.

“It may be,” answered Philibert; “but my impression is that she has influenced the Intendant, rather than he her, in this matter.”

The Bishop listened with warm interest to the account of Philibert. He looked a gentle reproof, but did not utter it, at La Corne St. Luc and Philibert, for their outspoken denunciation of the Intendant. He knew--none knew better--how deserved it was; but his ecclesiastical rank placed him at the apex of all parties in the Colony, and taught him prudence in expressing or hearing opinions of the King's representatives in the Colony.

“But what have you done, Pierre Philibert,” asked the Bishop, “since your arrival? Have you seen Le Gardeur?”

“No, my Lord; I followed him and the Chevalier to the city. They have gone to the Palace, whither I went and got admittance to the cabinet of the Intendant. He received me in his politest and blandest manner. I asked an interview with Le Gardeur. Bigot told me that my friend unfortunately at that moment was unfit to be seen, and had refused himself to all his city friends. I partly believed him, for I heard the voice of Le Gardeur in a distant room, amid a babble of tongues and the rattle of dice. I sent him a card with a few kind words, and received it back with an insult--deep and damning--scrawled upon it. It was not written, however, in the hand of Le Gardeur, although signed by his name. Read that, your Excellency,” said he, throwing a card to the Count. “I will not repeat the foul expressions it contains. Tell Pierre Philibert what he should do to save his honor and save his friend. Poor, wild, infatuated Le Gardeur never wrote that--never! They have made him sign his name to he knew not what.”

“And, by St. Martin!” exclaimed La Corne, who looked at the card, “some of them shall bite dust for that! As for Le Gardeur, poor boy, overlook his fault--pity him, forgive him. He is not so much to blame, Pierre, as those plundering thieves of the Friponne, who shall find that La Corne St. Luc's sword is longer by half an ell than is good for some of their stomachs!”

“Forbear, dear friends,” said the Bishop; “it is not the way of Christians to talk thus.”

“But it is the way of gentlemen!” replied La Corne, impatiently, “and I always hold that a true gentleman is a true Christian. But you do your duty, my Lord Bishop, in reproving us, and I honor you for it, although I may not promise obedience. David fought a duel with Goliath, and was honored by God and man for it, was he not?”

“But he fought it not in his own quarrel, La Corne,” replied the Bishop gently; “Goliath had defied the armies of the living God, and David fought for his king, not for himself.”

“Confiteor! my Lord Bishop, but the logic of the heart is often truer than the logic of the head, and the sword has no raison d'être, except in purging the world of scoundrels.”

“I will go home now; I will see your Excellency again on this matter,” said Pierre, rising to depart.

“Do, Pierre! my utmost services are at your command,” said the Governor, as the guests all rose too. It was very late.

The hour of departure had arrived; the company all rose, and courteously bidding their host good-night, proceeded to their several homes, leaving him alone with his friend Kalm.

They two at once passed into a little museum of minerals, plants, birds, and animals, where they sat down, eager as two boy-students. The world, its battles, and its politics were utterly forgotten, as they conversed far into the night and examined, with the delight of new discoverers, the beauty and variety of nature's forms that exist in the New World.

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XXXVIII. A WILD NIGHT INDOORS AND OUT

The Chevalier de Pean had been but too successful in his errand of mischief to the Manor House of Tilly.

A few days had sufficed for this accomplished ambassador of Bigot to tempt Le Gardeur to his ruin, and to triumph in his fall.

Upon his arrival at the Seigniory, De Pean had chosen to take up his quarters at the village inn, in preference to accepting the proffered hospitality of the Lady de Tilly, whom, however, he had frequently to see, having been craftily commissioned by Bigot with the settlement of some important matters of business relating to her Seigniory, as a pretext to visit the Manor House and linger in the village long enough to renew his old familiarity with Le Gardeur.

The visits of De Pean to the Manor House were politely but not cordially received. It was only by reason of the business he came upon that he was received at all. Nevertheless he paid his court to the ladies of the Manor, as a gentleman anxious to remove their prejudices and win their good opinion.

He once, and but once, essayed to approach Amélie with gallantry, a hair-breadth only beyond the rigid boundary-line of ordinary politeness, when he received a repulse so quick, so unspoken and invisible, that he could not tell in what it consisted, yet he felt it like a sudden paralysis of his powers of pleasing. He cared not again to encounter the quick glance of contempt and aversion which for an instant flashed in the eyes of Amélie when she caught the drift of his untimely admiration.

A woman is never so Rhadamanthean in her justice, and so quick in her execution of it, as when she is proud and happy in her love for another man: she is then indignant at every suggestion implying any doubt of the strength, purity, and absoluteness of her devotion.

De Pean ground his teeth in silent wrath at this quiet but unequivocal repulse, and vowed a bitter vow that Amélie should ere long repent in sackcloth and ashes for the wound inflicted upon his vanity and still more upon his cupidity.

One of the day-dreams of his fancy was broken, never to return. The immense fortune and high rank of the young Chatelaine de Repentigny had excited the cupidity of De Pean for some time, and although the voluptuous beauty of Angélique fastened his eyes, he would willingly have sacrificed her for the reversion of the lordships of Tilly and Repentigny.

De Pean's soul was too small to bear with equanimity the annihilation of his cherished hopes. As he looked down upon his white hands, his delicate feet, and irreproachable dress and manner, he seemed not to comprehend that a true woman like Amélie cares nothing for these things in comparison with a manly nature that seeks a woman for her own sake by love, and in love, and not by the accessories of wealth and position. For such a one she would go barefoot if need were, while golden slippers would not tempt her to walk with the other.

Amélie's beau-ideal of manhood was embodied in Pierre Philibert, and the greatest king in Christendom would have wooed in vain at her feet, much less an empty pretender like the Chevalier de Pean.

“I would not have treated any gentleman so rudely,” said Amélie in confidence to Héloise de Lotbinière when they had retired to the privacy of their bedchamber. “No woman is justified in showing scorn of any man's love, if it be honest and true; but the Chevalier de Pean is false to the heart's core, and his presumption woke such an aversion in my heart, that I fear my eyes showed less than ordinary politeness to his unexpected advances.”

“You were too gentle, not too harsh, Amélie,” replied Héloise, with her arm round her friend. “Had I been the object of his hateful addresses, I should have repaid him in his own false coin: I would have led him on to the brink of the precipice of a confession and an offer, and then I would have dropped him as one drops a stone into the deep pool of the Chaudière.”

“You were always more bold than I, Héloise; I could not do that for the world,” replied Amélie. “I would not willingly offend even the Chevalier de Pean. Moreover, I fear him, and I need not tell you why, darling. That man possesses a power over my dear brother that makes me tremble, and in my anxiety for Le Gardeur I may have lingered, as I did yesterday, too long in the parlor when in company with the Chevalier de Pean, who, mistaking my motive, may have supposed that I hated not his presence so much as I truly did!”

“Amélie, your fears are my own!” exclaimed Héloise, pressing Amélie to her side. “I must, I will tell you. O loved sister of mine,--let me call you so!--to you alone I dare acknowledge my hopeless love for Le Gardeur, and my deep and abiding interest in his welfare.”

“Nay, do not say hopeless, Héloise!” replied Amélie, kissing her fondly. “Le Gardeur is not insensible to your beauty and goodness. He is too like myself not to love you.”

“Alas, Amélie! I know it is all in vain. I have neither beauty nor other attractions in his eyes. He left me yesterday to converse with the Chevalier de Pean on the subject of Angélique des Meloises, and I saw, by the agitation of his manner, the flush upon his cheek, and the eagerness of his questioning, that he cared more for Angélique, notwithstanding her reported engagement with the Intendant, than he did for a thousand Héloises de Lotbinière!”

The poor girl, overpowered by the recollection, hid her face upon the shoulder of Amélie, and sobbed as if her very heart were breaking,--as in truth it was.

Amélie, so happy and secure in her own affection, comforted Héloise with her tears and caresses, but it was only by picturing in her imagination her own state, should she be so hapless as to lose the love of Pierre Philibert, that she could realize the depth of misery and abandonment which filled the bosom of her fair companion.

She was, moreover, struck to the heart by the words of Héloise regarding the eagerness of her brother to get word of Angélique. “The Chevalier de Pean might have brought a message, perhaps a love-token from Angélique to Le Gardeur to draw him back to the city,” thought she. If so, she felt instinctively that all their efforts to redeem him would be in vain, and that neither sister's love nor Pierre's remonstrances would avail to prevent his return. He was the slave of the lamp and Angélique its possessor.

“Heaven forbid, Héloise!” she said faintly; “Le Gardeur is lost if he return to the city now! Twice lost--lost as a gentleman, lost as the lover of a woman who cares for him only as a pastime and as a foil to her ambitious designs upon the Intendant! Poor Le Gardeur! what happiness might not be his in the love of a woman noble-minded as himself! What happiness were he yours, O darling Héloise!” She kissed her pallid cheeks, wet with tears, which lay by hers on the same pillow, and both remained silently brooding over the thoughts which spring from love and sorrow.

“Happiness can never be mine, Amélie,” said Héloise, after a lapse of several minutes. “I have long feared it, now I know it. Le Gardeur loves Angélique; he is wholly hers, and not one little corner of his heart is left for poor Héloise to nestle in! I did not ask much, Amélie, but I have not retained the little interest I believed was once mine! He has thrown the whole treasure of his life at her feet. After playing with it, she will spurn it for a more ambitious alliance! Oh, Amélie!” exclaimed she with vivacity, “I could be wicked! Heaven forgive me! I could be cruel and without pity to save Le Gardeur from the wiles of such a woman!”

The night was a stormy one; the east wind, which had lain in a dead lull through the early hours of the evening, rose in all its strength at the turn of the tide. It came bounding like the distant thud of a cannon. It roared and rattled against the windows and casements of the Manor House, sounding a deep bass in the long chimneys and howling like souls in torment amid the distant woods.

The rain swept down in torrents, as if the windows of heaven were opened to wash away the world's defilements. The stout walls of the Manor House were immovable as rocks, but the wind and the rain and the noise of the storm struck an awe into the two girls. They crept closer together in their bed; they dared not separate for the night. The storm seemed too much the reflex of the agitation of their own minds, and they lay clasped in each other's arms, mingling their tears and prayers for Le Gardeur until the gray dawn looked over the eastern hill and they slept.

The Chevalier de Pean was faithful to the mission upon which he had been despatched to Tilly. He disliked intensely the return of Le Gardeur to renew his old ties with Angélique. But it was his fate, his cursed crook, he called it, ever to be overborne by some woman or other, and he resolved that Le Gardeur should pay for it with his money, and be so flooded by wine and debauchery that Angélique herself would repent that she had ever invited his return.

That she would not marry Le Gardeur was plain enough to De Pean, who knew her ambitious views regarding the Intendant; and that the Intendant would not marry her was equally a certainty to him, although it did not prevent De Pean's entertaining an intense jealousy of Bigot.

Despite discouraging prospects, he found a consolation in the reflection that, failing his own vain efforts to please Amélie de Repentigny for sake of her wealth, the woman he most loved for sake of her beauty and spirit would yet drop like a golden fleece into his arms, either through spite at her false lover or through love of himself. De Pean cared little which, for it was the person, not the inclination of Angélique, that carried away captive the admiration of the Chevalier de Pean.

The better to accomplish his crafty design of abducting Le Gardeur, De Pean had taken up his lodging at the village inn. He knew that in the polite hospitalities of the Manor House he could find few opportunities to work upon the susceptible nature of Le Gardeur; that too many loving eyes would there watch over his safety, and that he was himself suspected, and his presence only tolerated on account of the business which had ostensibly brought him there. At the inn he would be free to work out his schemes, sure of success if by any means and on any pretence he could draw Le Gardeur thither and rouse into life and fury the sleeping serpents of his old propensities,--the love of gaming, the love of wine, and the love of Angélique.

Could Le Gardeur be persuaded to drink a full measure to the bright eyes of Angélique des Meloises, and could he, when the fire was kindled, be tempted once more to take in hand the box more fatal than that of Pandora and place fortune on the turn of a die, De Pean knew well that no power on earth could stop the conflagration of every good resolution and every virtuous principle in his mind. Neither aunt nor sister nor friends could withhold him then! He would return to the city, where the Grand Company had a use to make of him which he would never understand until it was too late for aught but repentance.

De Pean pondered long upon a few words he had one day heard drop from the lips of Bigot, which meant more, much more, than they seemed to imply, and they flitted long through his memory like bats in a room seeking an outlet into the night, ominous of some deed of darkness.

De Pean imagined that he had found a way to revenge himself on Le Gardeur and Amélie--each for thwarting him in a scheme of love or fortune. He brooded long and malignantly how to hatch the plot which he fancied was his own, but which had really been conceived in the deeper brain of Bigot, whose few seemingly harmless words had dropped into the ear of De Pean, casually as it were, but which Bigot knew would take root and grow in the congenial soul of his secretary and one day bring forth terrible fruit.

The next day was wet and autumnal, with a sweeping east wind which blew raw and gustily over the dark grass and drooping trees that edged the muddy lane of the village of Tilly.

At the few houses in the village everything was quiet, except at the old-fashioned inn, with its low, covered gallery and swinging sign of the Tilly Arms.

There, flitting round the door, or occasionally peering through the windows of the tap-room, with pipes in their mouths and perchance a tankard in their hands, were seen the elders of the village, boatmen, and habitans, making use, or good excuse, of a rainy day for a social gathering in the dry, snug chimney-corner of the Tilly Arms.

In the warmest corner of all, his face aglow with firelight and good liquor, sat Master Pothier dit Robin, with his gown tucked up to his waist as he toasted his legs and old gamashes in the genial warmth of a bright fire.

He leaned back his head and twirled his thumbs for a few minutes without speaking or listening to the babble around him, which had now turned upon the war and the latest sweep of the royal commissaries for corn and cattle. “Did you say, Jean La Marche,” said he, “that Le Gardeur de Repentigny was playing dice and drinking hot wine with the Chevalier de Pean and two big dogs of the Friponne?”

“I did.” Jean spoke with a choking sensation. “Our young Seigneur has broken out again wilder than ever, and is neither to hold nor bind any longer!”

“Ay!” replied Master Pothier reflectively, “the best bond I could draw would not bind him more than a spider's thread! They are stiff-necked as bulls, these De Repentignys, and will bear no yoke but what they put on of themselves! Poor lad! Do they know at the Manor House that he is here drinking and dicing with the Chevalier de Pean?”

“No! Else all the rain in heaven would not have prevented his being looked after by Mademoiselle Amélie and my Lady,” answered Jean. “His friend, Pierre Philibert, who is now a great officer of the King, went last night to Batiscan, on some matter of the army, as his groom told me. Had he been here, Le Gardeur would not have spent the day at the Tilly Arms, as we poor habitans do when it is washing-day at home.”

“Pierre Philibert!” Master Pothier rubbed his hands at this reminder, “I remember him, Jean! A hero like St. Denis! It was he who walked into the Château of the Intendant and brought off young De Repentigny as a cat does her kitten.”

“What, in his mouth, Master Pothier?”

“None of your quips, Jean; keep cool!” Master Pothier's own face grew red. “Never ring the coin that is a gift, and do not stretch my comparisons like your own wit to a bare thread. If I had said in his mouth, what then? It was by word of mouth, I warrant you, that he carried him away from Beaumanoir. Pity he is not here to take him away from the Tilly Arms!”

The sound of voices, the rattle and clash of the dice-box in the distant parlor, reached his ear amidst the laughter and gabble of the common room. The night was a hard one in the little inn.

In proportion as the common room of the inn grew quiet by the departure of its guests, the parlor occupied by the gentlemen became more noisy and distinct in its confusion. The song, the laugh, the jest, and jingle of glasses mingled with the perpetual rattle of dice or the thumps which accompanied the play of successful cards.

Paul Gaillard, the host, a timid little fellow not used to such high imperious guests, only ventured to look into the parlor when summoned for more wine. He was a born censitaire of the house of Tilly, and felt shame and pity as he beheld the dishevelled figure of his young Seigneur shaking the dice-box and defying one and all to another cast for love, liquor, or whole handfuls of uncounted coin.

Paul Gaillard had ventured once to whisper something to Le Gardeur about sending his calèche to the Manor House, hoping that his youthful master would consent to be driven home. But his proposal was met by a wild laugh from Le Gardeur and a good-humored expulsion from the room.

He dared not again interfere, but contented himself with waiting until break of day to send a message to the Lady de Tilly informing her of the sad plight of his young master.

De Pean, with a great object in view, had summoned Le Mercier and Emeric de Lantagnac from the city,--potent topers and hard players,--to assist him in his desperate game for the soul, body, and fortune of Le Gardeur de Repentigny.

They came willingly. The Intendant had laughingly wished them bon voyage and a speedy return with his friend Le Gardeur, giving them no other intimation of his wishes; nor could they surmise that he had any other object in view than the pleasure of again meeting a pleasant companion of his table and a sharer of their pleasures.

De Pean had no difficulty in enticing Le Gardeur down to the village inn, where he had arranged that he should meet, by mere accident, as it were, his old city friends.

The bold, generous nature of Le Gardeur, who neither suspected nor feared any evil, greeted them with warmth. They were jovial fellows, he knew, who would be affronted if he refused to drink a cup of wine with them. They talked of the gossip of the city, its coteries and pleasant scandals, and of the beauty and splendor of the queen of society--Angélique des Meloises.

Le Gardeur, with a painful sense of his last interview with Angélique, and never for a moment forgetting her reiterated words, “I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you,” kept silent whenever she was named, but talked with an air of cheerfulness on every other topic.

His one glass of wine was soon followed by another. He was pressed with such cordiality that he could not refuse. The fire was rekindled, at first with a faint glow upon his cheek and a sparkle in his eye; but the table soon overflowed with wine, mirth, and laughter. He drank without reflection, and soon spoke with warmth and looseness from all restraint.

De Pean, resolved to excite Le Gardeur to the utmost, would not cease alluding to Angélique. He recurred again and again to the splendor of her charms and the fascination of her ways. He watched the effect of his speech upon the countenance of Le Gardeur, keenly observant of every expression of interest excited by the mention of her.

“We will drink to her bright eyes,” exclaimed De Pean, filling his glass until it ran over, “first in beauty and worthy to be first in place in New France--yea, or Old France either! and he is a heathen who will not drink this toast!”

“Le Gardeur will not drink it! Neither would I, in his place,” replied Emeric de Lantagnac, too drunk now to mind what he said. “I would drink to the bright eyes of no woman who had played me the trick Angélique has played upon Le Gardeur!”

“What trick has she played upon me?” repeated Le Gardeur, with a touch of anger.

“Why, she has jilted you, and now flies at higher game, and nothing but a prince of the blood will satisfy her!”

“Does she say that, or do you invent it?” Le Gardeur was almost choking with angry feelings. Emeric cared little what he said, drunk or sober. He replied gravely,--

“Oh, all the women in the city say she said it! But you know, Le Gardeur, women will lie of one another faster than a man can count a hundred by tens.”

De Pean, while enjoying the vexation of Le Gardeur, feared that the banter of Emeric might have an ill effect on his scheme. “I do not believe it, Le Gardeur;” said he, “Angélique is too true a woman to say what she means to every jealous rival. The women hope she has jilted you. That counts one more chance for them, you know! Is not that feminine arithmetic, Le Mercier?” asked he.

“It is at the Friponne,” replied Le Mercier, laughing. “But the man who becomes debtor to Angélique des Meloises will never, if I know her, be discharged out of her books, even if he pay his debt.”

“Ay, they say she never lets a lover go, or a friend either,” replied De Pean. “I have proof to convince Le Gardeur that Angélique has not jilted him. Emeric reports women's tattle, nothing more.”

Le Gardeur was thoroughly roused. “Par Dieu!” exclaimed he, “my affairs are well talked over in the city, I think! Who gave man or woman the right to talk of me thus?”

“No one gave them the right. But the women claim it indefeasibly from Eve, who commenced talking of Adam's affairs with Satan the first time her man's back was turned.”

“Pshaw! Angélique des Meloises is as sensible as she is beautiful: she never said that! No, par Dieu! she never said to a man or woman that she had jilted me, or gave reason for others to say so!”

Le Gardeur in his vexation poured out with nervous hand a large glass of pure brandy and drank it down. It had an instant effect. His forehead flushed, and his eyes dilated with fresh fire. “She never said that!” repeated he fiercely. “I would swear it on my mother's head, she never did! and would kill any man who would dare affirm it of her!”

“Right! the way to win a woman is never to give her up,” answered De Pean. “Hark you, Le Gardeur, all the city knows that she favored you more than any of the rest of her legion of admirers. Why are you moping away your time here at Tilly when you ought to be running down your game in the city?”

“My Atalanta is too fleet of foot for me, De Pean,” replied Le Gardeur. “I have given up the chase. I have not the luck of Hippomanes.”

“That is, she is too fast!” said De Pean mockingly. “But have you thrown a golden apple at her feet to stop your runaway nymph?”

“I have thrown myself at her feet, De Pean! and in vain,” said Le Gardeur, gulping down another cup of brandy.

De Pean watched the effect of the deep potations which Le Gardeur now poured down to quench the rising fires kindled in his breast. “Come here, Le Gardeur,” said he; “I have a message for you which I would not deliver before, lest you might be angry.”

De Pean led him into a recess of the room. “You are wanted in the city,” whispered he. “Angélique sent this little note by me. She put it in my hand as I was embarking for Tilly, and blushed redder than a rose as she did so. I promised to deliver it safely to you.”

It was a note quaintly folded in a style Le Gardeur recognized well, inviting him to return to the city. Its language was a mixture of light persiflage and tantalizing coquetry,--she was dying of the dullness of the city! The late ball at the Palace had been a failure, lacking the presence of Le Gardeur! Her house was forlorn without the visits of her dear friend, and she wanted his trusty counsel in an affair of the last importance to her welfare and happiness!

“That girl loves you, and you may have her for the asking!” continued De Pean, as Le Gardeur sat crumpling the letter up in his hand. De Pean watched his countenance with the eye of a basilisk.

“Do you think so?” asked Le Gardeur eagerly. “But no, I have no more faith in woman; she does not mean it!”

“But if she does mean it, would you go, Le Gardeur?”

“Would I go?” replied he, excitedly. “Yes, I would go to the lowest pit in hell for her! But why are you taunting me, De Pean!”

“I taunt you? Read her note again! She wants your trusty counsel in an affair of the last importance to her welfare and happiness. You know what is the affair of last importance to a woman! Will you refuse her now, Le Gardeur?”

“No, par Dieu! I can refuse her nothing; no, not if she asked me for my head, although I know it is but mockery.”

“Never mind! Then you will return with us to the city? We start at daybreak.”

“Yes, I will go with you, De Pean; you have made me drunk, and I am willing to stay drunk till I leave Amélie and my aunt and Héloise, up at the Manor House. Pierre Philibert, he will be angry that I leave him, but he can follow, and they can all follow! I hate myself for it, De Pean! But Angélique des Meloises is to me more than creature or Creator. It is a sin to love a woman as I love her, De Pean!”

De Pean fairly writhed before the spirit he evoked. He was not so sure of his game but that it might yet be lost. He knew Angélique's passionate impulses, and he thought that no woman could resist such devotion as that of Le Gardeur.

He kept down his feelings, however. He saw that Le Gardeur was ripe for ruin. They returned to the table and drank still more freely. Dice and cards were resumed; fresh challenges were thrown out; Emeric and Le Mercier were already deep in a game; money was pushed to and fro. The contagion fastened like a plague upon Le Gardeur, who sat down at the table, drew forth a full purse, and pulling up every anchor of restraint, set sail on the flood-tide of drinking and gaming which lasted without ceasing until break of day.

De Pean never for a moment lost sight of his scheme for the abduction of Le Gardeur. He got ready for departure, and with a drunken rush and a broken song the four gallants, with unwashed faces and disordered clothes, staggered into their canoe and with a shout bade the boatmen start.

The hardy canotiers were ready for departure. They headed their long canoes down the flowing river, dashed their paddles into the water just silvered with the rays of the rising sun, and shot down stream towards the city of Quebec.

De Pean, elate with his success, did not let the gaiety of the party flag for a moment during their return. They drank, sang, and talked balderdash and indecencies in a way to bring a look of disgust upon the cheeks of the rough boatmen.

Much less sober than when they left Tilly, the riotous party reached the capital. The canotiers with rapid strokes of the paddle passed the high cliffs and guarded walls, and made for the quay of the Friponne, De Pean forcing silence upon his companions as they passed the Sault au Matelot, where a crowd of idle boatmen hailed them with volleys of raillery, which only ceased when the canoe was near enough for them to see whom it contained. They were instantly silent. The rigorous search made by order of the Intendant after the late rioters, and the summary punishment inflicted upon all who had been convicted, had inspired a careful avoidance of offence toward Bigot and the high officers of his staff.

De Pean landed quietly, few caring to turn their heads too often towards him. Le Gardeur, wholly under his control, staggered out of the canoe, and, taking his arm, was dragged rather than led up to the Palace, where Bigot greeted the party with loud welcome. Apartments were assigned to Le Gardeur, as to a most honored guest in the Palace. Le Gardeur de Repentigny was finally and wholly in the power of the Intendant.

Bigot looked triumphant, and congratulated De Pean on the success of his mission. “We will keep him now!” said he. “Le Gardeur must never draw a sober breath again until we have done with him!”

De Pean looked knowingly at Bigot; “I understand,” said he; “Emeric and Le Mercier will drink him blind, and Cadet, Varin, and the rest of us will rattle the dice like hail. We must pluck the pigeon to his last feather before he will feel desperate enough to play your game, Chevalier.”

“As you like, De Pean, about that,” replied Bigot; “only mind that he does not leave the Palace. His friends will run after him. That accursed Philibert will be here; on your life, do not let him see him! Hark you! When he comes, make Le Gardeur affront him by some offensive reply to his inquiry. You can do it.”

De Pean took the hint, and acted upon it by forging that infamous card in the name of Le Gardeur, and sending it as his reply to Pierre Philibert.

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XXXIX. MÈRE MALHEUR

La Corriveau, eager to commence her work of wickedness, took up her abode at the house of her ancient friend, Mère Malheur, whither she went on the night of her first interview with Angélique.

It was a small house, built of uncut stones, with rough stone steps and lintels, a peaked roof, and low overhanging eaves, hiding itself under the shadow of the cliff, so closely that it seemed to form a part of the rock itself.

Its sole inmate, an old crone who had reached the last degree of woman's ugliness and woman's heartlessness,--Mère Malheur--sold fair winds to superstitious sailors and good luck to hunters and voyageurs. She was not a little suspected of dabbling in other forbidden things. Half believing in her own impostures, she regarded La Corriveau with a feeling akin to worship, who in return for this devotion imparted to her a few secrets of minor importance in her diabolic arts.

La Corriveau was ever a welcome guest at the house of Mère Malheur, who feasted her lavishly, and served her obsequiously, but did not press with undue curiosity to learn her business in the city. The two women understood one another well enough not to pry too closely into each other's secrets.

On this occasion La Corriveau was more than usually reserved, and while Mère Malheur eagerly detailed to her all the doings and undoings that had happened in her circle of acquaintance, she got little information in return. She shrewdly concluded that La Corriveau had business on hand which would not bear to be spoken of.

“When you need my help, ask for it without scruple, Dame Dodier,” said the old crone. “I see you have something on hand that may need my aid. I would go into the fire to serve you, although I would not burn my finger for any other woman in the world, and you know it.”

“Yes, I know it, Mère Malheur,” La Corriveau spoke with an air of superiority, “and you say rightly: I have something on hand which I cannot accomplish alone, and I need your help, although I cannot tell you yet how or against whom.”

“Is it a woman or a man? I will only ask that question, Dame Dodier,” said the crone, turning upon her a pair of green, inquisitive eyes.

“It is a woman, and so of course you will help me. Our sex for the bottom of all mischief, Mère Malheur! I do not know what women are made for except to plague one another for the sake of worthless men!”

The old crone laughed a hideous laugh, and playfully pushed her long fingers into the ribs of La Corriveau. “Made for! quotha! men's temptation, to be sure, and the beginning of all mischief!”

“Pretty temptations you and I are, Mère Malheur!” replied La Corriveau, with a scornful laugh.

“Well, we were pretty temptations once! I will never give up that! You must own, Dame Dodier, we were both pretty temptations once!”

“Pshaw! I wish I had been a man, for my part,” replied La Corriveau, impetuously. “It was a spiteful cross of fate to make me a woman!”

“But, Dame Dodier, I like to be a woman, I do. A man cannot be half as wicked as a woman, especially if she be young and pretty,” said the old woman, laughing till the tears ran out of her bleared eyes.

“Nay, that is true, Mère Malheur; the fairest women in the world are ever the worst! fair and false! fair and false! they are always so. Not one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!” La Corriveau looked an incarnation of Hecate as she uttered this calumny upon her sex.

“Ay, I have his mark on my knee, Dame Dodier,” replied the crone. “See here! It was pricked once in the high court of Arras, but the fool judge decided that it was a mole, and not a witch-mark! I escaped a red gown that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity, and bewitched him for it in earnest. I was young and pretty then! He died in a year, and Satan sat on his grave in the shape of a black cat until his friends set a cross over it. I like to be a woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked, and so nice! I always tell the girls that, and they give me twice as much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw! Nice! If only men knew us as we really are!”

“Well, I do not like women, Mère Malheur,” replied La Corriveau; “they sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they will lie, steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one man to-day, and cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise Solomon found only one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now finds not one in a worldful! It were better all of us were dead, Mère Malheur; but pour me out a glass of wine, for I am tired of tramping in the dark to the house of that gay lady I told you of.”

Mère Malheur poured out a glass of choice Beaume from a dame-jeanne which she had received from a roguish sailor, who had stolen it from his ship.

“But you have not told me who she is, Dame Dodier,” replied Mère Malheur, refilling the glass of La Corriveau.

“Nor will I yet. She is fit to be your mistress and mine, whoever she is; but I shall not go again to see her.”

And La Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angélique. She had received from her precise information respecting the movements of the Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivières on urgent affairs, and might be absent for a week.

Angélique had received from Varin, in reply to her eager question for news, a short, falsified account of the proceedings in the Council relative to Caroline and of Bigot's indignant denial of all knowledge of her.

Varin, as a member of the Council, dared not reveal the truth, but would give his familiars half-hints, or tell to others elaborate lies, when pressed for information. He did not, in this case, even hint at the fact that a search was to be made for Caroline. Had he done so, Angélique would herself have given secret information to the Governor to order the search of Beaumanoir, and thus got her rival out of the way without trouble, risk, or crime.

But it was not to be. The little word that would have set her active spirit on fire to aid in the search for Caroline was not spoken, and her thoughts remained immovably fixed upon her death.

But if Angélique had been misled by Varin as to what had passed at the Council, Mère Malheur, through her intercourse with a servant of Varin, had learned the truth. An eavesdropping groom had overheard his master and the Intendant conversing on the letters of the Baron and La Pompadour. The man told his sweetheart, who, coming with some stolen sweetmeats to Mère Malheur, told her, who in turn was not long in imparting what she had heard to La Corriveau.

La Corriveau did not fail to see that, should Angélique discover that her rival was to be searched for, and taken to France if found, she would at once change her mind, and Caroline would be got rid of without need of her interference. But La Corriveau had got her hand in the dish. She was not one to lose her promised reward or miss the chance of so cursed a deed by any untimely avowal of what she knew.

So Angélique was doomed to remain in ignorance until too late. She became the dupe of her own passions and the dupe of La Corriveau, who carefully concealed from her a secret so important.

Bigot's denial in the Council weighed nothing with her. She felt certain that the lady was no other than Caroline de St. Castin. Angélique was acute enough to perceive that Bigot's bold assertion that he knew nothing of her bound him in a chain of obligation never to confess afterwards aught to the contrary. She eagerly persuaded herself that he would not regret to hear that Caroline had died by some sudden and, to appearance, natural death, and thus relieved him of a danger, and her of an obstacle to her marriage.

Without making a full confidant of Mère Malheur, La Corriveau resolved to make use of her in carrying out her diabolical scheme. Mère Malheur had once been a servant at Beaumanoir. She knew the house, and in her heyday of youth and levity had often smuggled herself in and out by the subterranean passage which connected the solitary watchtower with the vaults of the Château. Mère Malheur knew Dame Tremblay, who, as the Charming Josephine, had often consulted her upon the perplexities of a heart divided among too many lovers.

The memory of that fragrant period of her life was the freshest and pleasantest of all Dame Tremblay's experience. It was like the odor of new-mown hay, telling of early summer and frolics in the green fields. She liked nothing better than to talk it all over in her snug room with Mère Malheur, as they sat opposite one another at her little table, each with a cup of tea in her hand, well laced with brandy, which was a favorite weakness of them both.

Dame Tremblay was, in private, neither nice nor squeamish as to the nature of her gossip. She and the old fortune-teller, when out of sight of the rest of the servants, had always a dish of the choicest scandal fresh from the city.

La Corriveau resolved to send Mère Malheur to Beaumanoir, under the pretence of paying a visit to Dame Tremblay, in order to open a way of communication between herself and Caroline. She had learned enough during her brief interview with Caroline in the forest of St. Valier, and from what she now heard respecting the Baron de St. Castin, to convince her that this was no other than his missing daughter.

“If Caroline could only be induced to admit La Corriveau into her secret chamber and take her into her confidence, the rest--all the rest,” muttered the hag to herself, with terrible emphasis, “would be easy, and my reward sure. But that reward shall be measured in my own bushel, not in yours, Mademoiselle des Meloises, when the deed is done!”

La Corriveau knew the power such a secret would enable her to exercise over Angélique. She already regarded the half of her reputed riches as her own. “Neither she nor the Intendant will ever dare neglect me after that!” said she. “When once Angélique shall be linked in with me by a secret compact of blood, the fortune of La Corriveau is made. If the death of this girl be the elixir of life to you, it shall be the touchstone of fortune forever to La Corriveau!”

Mère Malheur was next day despatched on a visit to her old gossip, Dame Tremblay. She had been well tutored on every point, what to say and how to demean herself. She bore a letter to Caroline, written in the Italian hand of La Corriveau, who had learned to write well from her mother, Marie Exili.

The mere possession of the art of writing was a rarity in those days in the class among whom she lived. La Corriveau's ability to write at all was a circumstance as remarkable to her illiterate neighbors as the possession of the black art which they ascribed to her, and not without a strong suspicion that it had the same origin.

Mère Malheur, in anticipation of a cup of tea and brandy with Dame Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of her head. Her shoes displayed broad buckles of brass, and her short petticoat showed a pair of stout ankles enclosed in red clocked stockings. She carried a crutched stick in her hand, by help of which she proceeded vigorously on her journey.

Starting in the morning, she trudged out of the city towards the ferry of Jean Le Nocher, who carefully crossed himself and his boat too as he took Mère Malheur on board. He wafted her over in a hurry, as something to be got rid of as quickly as possible.

Mère Malheur tramped on, like a heavy gnome, through the fallen and flying leaves of the woods of Beaumanoir, caring nothing for the golden, hazy sky, the soft, balmy air, or the varicolored leaves--scarlet, yellow, and brown, of every shade and tinge--that hung upon the autumnal trees.

A frosty night or two had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,--the Indian summer,--that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter like a bird of paradise amid the pleasures and gaieties of the world, and then comes the end. Her locks of pride are shorn off; she veils her beauty, and kneels a nun on the cold stones of her passionless cell, out of which, even with repentance, there comes no deliverance.

Mère Malheur's arrival at Beaumanoir was speedily known to all the servants of the Château. She did not often visit them, but when she did there was a hurried recital of an Ave or two to avert any harm, followed by a patronizing welcome and a rummage for small coins to cross her hand withal in return for her solutions of the grave questions of love, jealousy, money, and marriage, which fermented secretly or openly in the bosoms of all of them. They were but human beings, food for imposture, and preyed on by deceivers. The visit of Mère Malheur was an event of interest in both kitchen and laundry of the Château.

Dame Tremblay had the first claim, however, upon this singular visitor. She met her at the back door of the Château, and with a face beaming with smiles, and dropping all dignity, exclaimed,--

“Mère Malheur, upon my life! Welcome, you wicked old soul! you surely knew I wanted to see you! come in and rest! you must be tired, unless you came on a broom! ha! ha! come to my room and never mind anybody!”

This last remark was made for the benefit of the servants who stood peeping at every door and corner, not daring to speak to the old woman in the presence of the housekeeper, but knowing that their time would come, they had patience.

The housekeeper, giving them a severe look, proceeded to her own snug apartment, followed by the crone, whom she seated in her easiest chair and proceeded to refresh with a glass of cognac, which was swallowed with much relish and wiping of lips, accompanied by a little artificial cough. Dame Tremblay kept a carafe of it in her room to raise the temperature of her low spirits and vapors to summer heat, not that she drank, far from it, but she liked to sip a little for her stomach's sake.

“It is only a thimbleful I take now and then,” she said. “When I was the Charming Josephine I used to kiss the cups I presented to the young gallants, and I took no more than a fly! but they always drank bumpers from the cup I kissed!” The old dame looked grave as she shook her head and remarked, “But we cannot be always young and handsome, can we, Mère Malheur?”

“No, dame, but we can be jolly and fat, and that is what we are! You don't quaff life by thimblefuls, and you only want a stout offer to show the world that you can trip as briskly to church yet as any girl in New France!”

The humor of the old crone convulsed Dame Tremblay with laughter, as if some invisible fingers were tickling her wildly under the armpits.

She composed herself at last, and drawing her chair close to that of Mère Malheur, looked her inquiringly in the face and asked, “What is the news?”

Dame Tremblay was endowed with more than the ordinary curiosity of her sex. She knew more news of city and country than any one else, and she dispensed it as freely as she gathered. She never let her stock of gossip run low, and never allowed man or woman to come to speak with her without pumping them dry of all they knew. A secret in anybody's possession set her wild to possess it, and she gave no rest to her inordinate curiosity until she had fished it out of even the muddiest waters.

The mystery that hung around Caroline was a source of perpetual irritation to the nerves of Dame Tremblay. She had tried as far as she dared by hint and suggestion to draw from the lady some reference to her name and family, but in vain. Caroline would avow nothing, and Dame Tremblay, completely baffled by a failure of ordinary means to find out the secret, bethought herself of her old resource in case of perplexity, Mère Malheur.

For several days she had been brooding over this mode of satisfying her curiosity, when the unexpected visit of Mère Malheur set aside all further hesitation about disobeying the Intendant's orders not to inquire or allow any other person to make inquisition respecting Caroline.

“Mère Malheur, you feel comfortable now!” said she. “That glass of cognac has given you a color like a peony!”

“Yes, I am very comfortable now, dame! your cognac is heavenly: it warms without burning. That glass is the best news I have to tell of to-day!”

“Nay, but there is always something stirring in the city; somebody born, married, or dead; somebody courted, won, lost, or undone; somebody's name up, somebody's reputation down! Tell me all you know, Mère Malheur! and then I will tell you something that will make you glad you came to Beaumanoir to-day. Take another sip of cognac and begin!”

“Ay, dame, that is indeed a temptation!” She took two deep sips, and holding her glass in her hand, began with loose tongue to relate the current gossip of the city, which was already known to Dame Tremblay; but an ill-natured version of it from the lips of her visitor seemed to give it a fresh seasoning and a relish which it had not previously possessed.

“Now, Mère Malheur! I have a secret to tell you,” said Dame Tremblay, in a low, confidential tone, “a dead secret, mind you, which you had better be burnt than reveal. There is a lady, a real lady if I ever saw one, living in the Château here in the greatest privacy. I and the Intendant only see her. She is beautiful and full of sorrow as the picture of the blessed Madonna. What she is, I may guess; but who she is, I cannot conjecture, and would give my little finger to know!”

“Tut, dame!” replied Mère Malheur, with a touch of confidence, “I will not believe any woman could keep a secret from you! But this is news, indeed, you tell me! A lady in concealment here, and you say you cannot find her out, Dame Tremblay!”

“In truth, I cannot; I have tried every artifice, but she passes all my wit and skill. If she were a man, I would have drawn her very teeth out with less difficulty than I have tried to extract the name of this lady. When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport, I could wind men like a thread around which finger I liked; but this is a tangled knot which drives me to despair to unravel it.”

“What do you know about her, dame? Tell me all you suspect!” said Mère Malheur.

“Truly,” replied the dame, without the least asperity, “I suspect the poor thing, like the rest of us, is no better than she should be; and the Intendant knows it, and Mademoiselle des Meloises knows it too; and, to judge by her constant prayers and penitence, she knows it herself but too well, and will not say it to me!”

“Ay, dame! but this is great news you tell me!” replied Mère Malheur, eagerly clutching at the opportunity thus offered for the desired interview. “But what help do you expect from me in the matter?”

Mère Malheur looked very expectant at her friend, who continued, “I want you to see that lady under promise of secrecy, mark you!--and look at her hands, and tell me who and what she is.”

Dame Tremblay had an unlimited faith in the superstitions of her age.

“I will do all you wish, dame, but you must allow me to see her alone,” replied the crone, who felt she was thus opening the door to La Corriveau.

“To be sure I will,--that is, if she will consent to be seen, for she has in some things a spirit of her own! I am afraid to push her too closely! The mystery of her is taking the flesh off my bones, and I can only get sleep by taking strong possets, Mère Malheur! Feel my elbow! Feel my knee! I have not had so sharp an elbow or knee since Goodman Tremblay died! And he said I had the sharpest elbow and knee in the city! But I had to punch him sometimes to keep him in order! But set that horrid cap straight, Mère Malheur, while I go ask her if she would like to have her fortune told. She is not a woman if she would not like to know her fortune, for she is in despair, I think, with all the world; and when a woman is in despair, as I know by my own experience, she will jump at any chance for spite, if not for love, as I did when I took the Sieur Tremblay by your advice, Mère Malheur!”

Dame Tremblay left the old crone making hideous faces in a mirror. She rubbed her cheeks and mouth with the corner of her apron as she proceeded to the door of Caroline's apartment. She knocked gently, and a low, soft voice bade her enter.

Caroline was seated on a chair by the window, knitting her sad thoughts into a piece of work which she occasionally lifted from her lap with a sudden start, as something broke the train of her reflections.

She was weighing over and over in her thoughts, like gold in a scale, by grains and pennyweights, a few kind words lately spoken to her by Bigot when he ran in to bid her adieu before departing on his journey to Trois Rivières. They seemed a treasure inexhaustible as she kept on repeating them to herself. The pressure of his hand had been warmer, the tone of his voice softer, the glance of his eye more kind, and he looked pityingly, she thought, upon her wan face when he left her in the gallery, and with a cheery voice and a kiss bade her take care of her health and win back the lost roses of Acadia.

These words passed through her mind with unceasing repetition, and a white border of light was visible on the edge of the dark cloud which hung over her. “The roses of Acadia will never bloom again,” thought she sadly. “I have watered them with salt tears too long, and all in vain. O Bigot, I fear it is too late, too late!” Still, his last look and last words reflected a faint ray of hope and joy upon her pallid countenance.

Dame Tremblay entered the apartment, and while busying herself on pretence of setting it in order, talked in her garrulous way of the little incidents of daily life in the Château, and finished by a mention, as if it were casual, of the arrival of the wise woman of the city, who knew everything, who could interpret dreams, and tell, by looking in a glass or in your hand, things past, present, and to come.

“A wonderful woman,” Dame Tremblay said, “a perilous woman too, not safe to deal with; but for all that, every one runs after her, and she has a good or bad word for every person who consults her. For my part,” continued the dame, “she foretold my marriage with the Goodman Tremblay long before it happened, and she also foretold his death to the very month it happened. So I have reason to believe in her as well as to be thankful!”

Caroline listened attentively to the dame's remarks. She was not superstitious, but yet not above the beliefs of her age, while the Indian strain in her lineage and her familiarity with the traditions of the Abenaquis inclined her to yield more than ordinary respect to dreams.

Caroline had dreamed of riding on a coal-black horse, seated behind the veiled figure of a man whose face she could not see, who carried her like the wind away to the ends of the earth, and there shut her up in a mountain for ages and ages, until a bright angel cleft the rock, and, clasping her in his arms, bore her up to light and liberty in the presence of the Redeemer and of all the host of heaven.

This dream lay heavy on her mind. For the veiled figure she knew was one she loved, but who had no honest love for her. Her mind had been brooding over the dream all day, and the announcement by Dame Tremblay of the presence in the Château of one who was able to interpret dreams seemed a stroke of fortune, if not an act of Providence.

She roused herself up, and with more animation than Dame Tremblay had yet seen in her countenance, requested her to send up the visitor, that she might ask her a question.

Mère Malheur was quickly summoned to the apartment of Caroline, where Dame Tremblay left them alone.

The repulsive look of the old crone sent a shock through the fine, nervous organization of the young girl. She requested Mère Malheur to be seated, however, and in her gentle manner questioned her about the dream.

Mère Malheur was an adept in such things, and knew well how to humor human nature, and lead it to put its own interpretations upon its own visions and desires while giving all the credit of it to herself.

Mère Malheur therefore interpreted the dream according to Caroline's secret wishes. This inspired a sort of confidence, and Mère Malheur seized the opportunity to deliver the letter from La Corriveau.

“My Lady,” said she, looking carefully round the room to note if the door was shut and no one was present, “I can tell you more than the interpretation of your dream. I can tell who you are and why you are here!”

Caroline started with a frightened look, and stared in the face of Mère Malheur. She faltered out at length,--“You know who I am and why I am here? Impossible! I never saw you before.”

“No, my Lady, you never saw me before, but I will convince you that I know you. You are the daughter of the Baron de St. Castin! Is it not so?” The old crone looked frightfully knowing as she uttered these words.

“Mother of mercies! what shall I do?” ejaculated the alarmed girl. “Who are you to say that?”

“I am but a messenger, my Lady. Listen! I am sent here to give you secretly this letter from a friend who knows you better than I, and who above all things desires an interview with you, as she has things of the deepest import to communicate.”

“A letter! Oh, what mystery is all this? A letter for me! Is it from the Intendant?”

“No, my Lady, it is from a woman.” Caroline blushed and trembled as she took it from the old crone.

A woman! It flashed upon the mind of Caroline that the letter was important. She opened it with trembling fingers, anticipating she knew not what direful tidings when her eyes ran over the clear handwriting.

La Corriveau had written to the effect that she was an unknown friend, desirous of serving her in a moment of peril. The Baron de St. Castin had traced her to New France, and had procured from the King instructions to the Governor to search for her everywhere and to send her to France. Other things of great import, the writer said, she had also to communicate, if Caroline would grant her a private interview in the Château.

There was a passage leading from the old deserted watch-tower to the vaulted chamber, continued the letter, and the writer would without further notice come on the following night to Beaumanoir, and knock at the arched door of her chamber about the hour of midnight, when, if Caroline pleased to admit her, she would gladly inform her of very important matters relating to herself, to the Intendant, and to the Baron de St. Castin, who was on his way out to the Colony to conduct in person the search after his lost daughter.

The letter concluded with the information that the Intendant had gone to Trois Rivières, whence he might not return for a week, and that during his absence the Governor would probably order a search for her to be made at Beaumanoir.

Caroline held the letter convulsively in her hand as she gathered its purport rather than read it. Her face changed color, from a deep flush of shame to the palest hue of fear, when she comprehended its meaning and understood that her father was on his way to New France to find out her hiding-place.

“What shall I do! Oh, what shall I do!” exclaimed she, wringing her hands for very anguish, regardless of the presence of Mère Malheur, who stood observing her with eyes glittering with curiosity, but void of every mark of womanly sympathy or feeling.

“My father, my loving father!” continued Caroline, “my deeply-injured father coming here with anger in his face to drag me from my concealment! I shall drop dead at his feet for very shame. Oh, that I were buried alive with mountains piled over me to hide me from my father! What shall I do? Whither shall I go? Bigot, Bigot, why have you forsaken me?”

Mère Malheur continued eyeing her with cold curiosity, but was ready at the first moment to second the promptings of the evil spirit contained in the letter.

“Mademoiselle,” said she, “there is but one way to escape from the search to be made by your father and the Governor,--take counsel of her who sends you that friendly letter. She can offer you a safe hiding-place until the storm blows over. Will you see her, my Lady?”

“See her! I, who dare see no one! Who is she that sends me such strange news? Is it truth? Do you know her?” continued she, looking fixedly at Mère Malheur, as if in hope of reading on her countenance some contradiction of the matter contained in the letter.

“I think it is all true, my Lady,” replied she, with mock humility; “I am but a poor messenger, however, and speak not myself of things I do not know, but she who sends me will tell you all.”

“Does the Intendant know her?”

“I think he told her to watch over your safety during his absence. She is old and your friend; will you see her?” replied Mère Malheur, who saw the point was gained.

“Oh, yes, yes! tell her to come. Beseech her not to fail to come, or I shall go mad. O woman, you too are old and experienced and ought to know,--can she help me in this strait, think you?” exclaimed Caroline, clasping her hands in a gesture of entreaty.

“No one is more able to help you,” said the crone; “she can counsel you what to do, and if need be find means to conceal you from the search that will be made for you.”

“Haste, then, and bid her come to-morrow night! Why not tonight?” Caroline was all nervous impatience. “I will wait her coming in the vaulted chamber; I will watch for her as one in the valley of death watches for the angel of deliverance. Bid her come, and at midnight to-morrow she shall find the door of the secret chamber open to admit her.”

The eagerness of the ill-fated girl to see La Corriveau outran every calculation of Mère Malheur. It was in vain and useless for her to speak further on the subject; Caroline would say no more. Her thoughts ran violently in the direction suggested by the artful letter. She would see La Corriveau to-morrow night, and would make no more avowals to Mère Malheur, she said to herself.

Seeing no more was to be got out of her, the crone bade her a formal farewell, looking at her curiously as she did so, and wondering in her mind if she should ever see her again. For the old creature had a shrewd suspicion that La Corriveau had not told her all her intentions with respect to this singular girl.

Caroline returned her salute, still holding the letter in her hand. She sat down to peruse it again, and observed not Mère Malheur's equivocal glance as she turned her eyes for the last time upon the innocent girl, doomed to receive the midnight visit from La Corriveau.

“There is death in the pot!” the crone muttered as she went out,--“La Corriveau comes not here on her own errand either! That girl is too beautiful to live, and to some one her death is worth gold! It will go hard, but La Corriveau shall share with me the reward of the work of tomorrow night!”

In the long gallery she encountered Dame Tremblay “ready to eat her up,” as she told La Corriveau afterwards, in the eagerness of her curiosity to learn the result of her interview with Caroline.

Mère Malheur was wary, and accustomed to fence with words. It was necessary to tell a long tale of circumstances to Dame Tremblay, but not necessary nor desirable to tell the truth. The old crone therefore, as soon as she had seated herself in the easy chair of the housekeeper and refreshed herself by twice accepting the dame's pressing invitation to tea and cognac, related with uplifted hands and shaking head a narrative of bold lies regarding what had really passed during her interview with Caroline.

“But who is she, Mère Malheur? Did she tell you her name? Did she show you her palm?”

“Both, dame, both! She is a girl of Ville Marie who has run away from her parents for love of the gallant Intendant, and is in hiding from them. They wanted to put her into the Convent to cure her of love. The Convent always cures love, dame, beyond the power of philtres to revive it!” and the old crone laughed inwardly to herself, as if she doubted her own saying.

Eager to return to La Corriveau with the account of her successful interview with Caroline, she bade Dame Tremblay a hasty but formal farewell, and with her crutched stick in her hand trudged stoutly back to the city.

Mère Malheur, while the sun was yet high, reached her cottage under the rock, where La Corriveau was eagerly expecting her at the window. The moment she entered, the masculine voice of La Corriveau was heard asking loudly,--

“Have you seen her, Mère Malheur? Did you give her the letter? Never mind your hat! tell me before you take it off!” The old crone was tugging at the strings, and La Corriveau came to help her.

“Yes! she took your letter,” replied she, impatiently. “She took my story like spring water. Go at the stroke of twelve to-morrow night and she will let you in, Dame Dodier; but will she let you out again, eh?” The crone stood with her hat in her hand, and looked with a wicked glance at La Corriveau.

“If she will let me in, I shall let myself out, Mère Malheur,” replied Corriveau in a low tone. “But why do you ask that?”

“Because I read mischief in your eye and see it twitching in your thumb, and you do not ask me to share your secret! Is it so bad as that, Dame Dodier?”

“Pshaw! you are sharing it! wait and you will see your share of it! But tell me, Mère Malheur, how does she look, this mysterious lady of the Château?” La Corriveau sat down, and placed her long, thin hand on the arm of the old crone.

“Like one doomed to die, because she is too good to live. Sorrow is a bad pasture for a young creature like her to feed on, Dame Dodier!” was the answer, but it did not change a muscle on the face of La Corriveau.

“Ay! but there are worse pastures than sorrow for young creatures like her, and she has found one of them,” she replied, coldly.

“Well! as we make our bed so must we lie on it, Dame Dodier,--that is what I always tell the silly young things who come to me asking their fortunes; and the proverb pleases them. They always think the bridal bed must be soft and well made, at any rate.”

“They are fools! better make their death-bed than their bridal bed! But I must see this piece of perfection of yours to-morrow night, dame! The Intendant returns in two days, and he might remove her. Did she tell you about him?”

“No! Bigot is a devil more powerful than the one we serve, dame. I fear him!”

“Tut! I fear neither devil nor man. It was to be at the hour of twelve! Did you not say at the hour of twelve, Mère Malheur?”

“Yes! go in by the vaulted passage and knock at the secret door. She will admit you. But what will you do with her, Dame Dodier? Is she doomed? Could you not be gentle with her, dame?”

There was a fall in the voice of Mère Malheur,--an intonation partly due to fear of consequences, partly to a fibre of pity which--dry and disused--something in the look of Caroline had stirred like a dead leaf quivering in the wind.

“Tut! has she melted your old dry heart to pity, Mère Malheur! Ha, ha! who would have thought that! and yet I remember she made a soft fool of me for a minute in the wood of St. Valier!” La Corriveau spoke in a hard tone, as if in reproving Mère Malheur she was also reproving herself.

“She is unlike any other woman I ever saw,” replied the crone, ashamed of her unwonted sympathy. “The devil is clean out of her as he is out of a church.”

“You are a fool, Mère Malheur! Out of a church, quotha!” and La Corriveau laughed a loud laugh; “why I go to church myself, and whisper my prayers backwards to keep on terms with the devil, who stands nodding behind the altar to every one of my petitions,--that is more than some people get in return for their prayers,” added she.

“I pray backwards in church too, dame, but I could never get sight of him there, as you do: something always blinds me!” and the two old sinners laughed together at the thought of the devil's litanies they recited in the church.

“But how to get to Beaumanoir? I shall have to walk, as you did, Mère Malheur. It is a vile road, and I must take the byway through the forest. It were worth my life to be seen on this visit,” said La Corriveau, conning on her fingers the difficulties of the by-path, which she was well acquainted with, however.

“There is a moon after nine, by which hour you can reach the wood of Beaumanoir,” observed the crone. “Are you sure you know the way, Dame Dodier?”

“As well as the way into my gown! I know an Indian canotier who will ferry me across to Beauport, and say nothing. I dare not allow that prying knave, Jean Le Nocher, or his sharp wife, to mark my movements.”

“Well thought of, Dame Dodier; you are of a craft and subtlety to cheat Satan himself at a game of hide and seek!” The crone looked with genuine admiration, almost worship, at La Corriveau as she said this; “but I doubt he will find both of us at last, dame, when we have got into our last corner.”

“Well, vogue la galère!” exclaimed La Corriveau, starting up. “Let it go as it will! I shall walk to Beaumanoir, and I shall fancy I wear golden garters and silver slippers to make the way easy and pleasant. But you must be hungry, Mère, with your long tramp. I have a supper prepared for you, so come and eat in the devil's name, or I shall be tempted to say grace in nomine Domini, and choke you.”

The two women went to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish maidservant had brought to Mère Malheur with the groom's story of the conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angélique have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot to kill the unhappy Caroline.

“I were a fool to tell her that story of the groom's,” muttered La Corriveau to herself, “and spoil the fairest experiment of the aqua tofana ever made, and ruin my own fortune too! I know a trick worth two of that,” and she laughed inwardly to herself a laugh which was repeated in hell and made merry the ghosts of Beatrice Spara, Exili, and La Voisin.

All next day La Corriveau kept closely to the house, but she found means to communicate to Angélique her intention to visit Beaumanoir that night.

The news was grateful, yet strangely moving to Angélique; she trembled and turned pale, not for truth, but for doubt and dread of possible failure or discovery.

She sent by an unknown hand to the house of Mère Malheur a little basket containing a bouquet of roses so beautiful and fragrant that they might have been plucked in the garden of Eden.

La Corriveau carried the basket into an inner chamber, a small room, the window of which never saw the sun, but opened against the close, overhanging rock, which was so near that it might be touched by the hand. The dark, damp wall of the cliff shed a gloomy obscurity in the room even at midday.

The small black eyes of La Corriveau glittered like poniards as she opened the basket, and taking out the bouquet, found attached to it by a ribbon a silken purse containing a number of glittering pieces of gold. She pressed the coins to her cheek, and even put them between her lips to taste their sweetness, for money she loved beyond all things. The passion of her soul was avarice; her wickedness took its direction from the love of money, and scrupled at no iniquity for the sake of it.

She placed the purse carefully in her bosom, and took up the roses, regarding them with a strange look of admiration as she muttered, “They are beautiful and they are sweet! men would call them innocent! they are like her who sent them, fair without as yet; like her who is to receive them, fair within.” She stood reflecting for a few moments, and exclaimed as she laid the bouquet upon the table,--

“Angélique des Meloises, you send your gold and your roses to me because you believe me to be a worse demon than yourself, but you are worthy to be crowned tonight with these roses as queen of hell and mistress of all the witches that ever met in Grand Sabbat at the palace of Galienne, where Satan sits on a throne of gold!”

La Corriveau looked out of the window and saw a corner of the rock lit up with the last ray of the setting sun. She knew it was time to prepare for her journey. She loosened her long black and gray elfin locks, and let them fall dishevelled over her shoulders. Her thin, cruel lips were drawn to a rigid line, and her eyes were filled with red fire as she drew the casket of ebony out of her bosom and opened it with a reverential touch, as a devotee would touch a shrine of relics. She took out a small, gilded vial of antique shape, containing a clear, bright liquid, which, as she shook it up, seemed filled with a million sparks of fire.

Before drawing the glass stopper of the vial, La Corriveau folded a handkerchief carefully over her mouth and nostrils, to avoid inhaling the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by the terrible Beatrice Spara.

La Corriveau repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times of heathen Rome:

“'Hecaten voco! Voco Tisiphonem! Spargens avernales aquas, Te morti devoveo, te diris ago!”'

The terrible drops of the aqua tofana glittered like dew on the glowing flowers, taking away in a moment all their fragrance, while leaving all their beauty unimpaired. The poison sank into the very hearts of the roses, whence it breathed death from every petal and every leaf, leaving them fair as she who had sent them, but fatal to the approach of lip or nostril, fit emblems of her unpitying hate and remorseless jealousy.

La Corriveau wrapped the bouquet in a medicated paper of silver tissue, which prevented the escape of the volatile death, and replacing the roses carefully in the basket, prepared for her departure to Beaumanoir.

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XL. QUOTH THE RAVEN, “NEVERMORE!”

It was the eve of St. Michael. A quiet autumnal night brooded over the forest of Beaumanoir. The moon, in her wane, had risen late, and struggled feebly among the broken clouds that were gathering slowly in the east, indicative of a storm. She shed a dim light through the glades and thickets, just enough to discover a path where the dark figure of a woman made her way swiftly and cautiously towards the Château of the Intendant.

She was dressed in the ordinary costume of a peasant-woman, and carried a small basket on her arm, which, had she opened it, would have been found to contain a candle and a bouquet of fresh roses carefully covered with a paper of silver tissue,--nothing more. An honest peasant-woman would have had a rosary in her basket, but this was no honest-peasant woman, and she had none.

The forest was very still,--it was steeped in quietness. The rustling of the dry leaves under the feet of the woman was all she heard, except when the low sighing of the wind, the sharp bark of a fox, or the shriek of an owl, broke the silence for a moment, and all was again still.

The woman looked watchfully around as she glided onwards. The path was known to her, but not so familiarly as to prevent the necessity of stopping every few minutes to look about her and make sure she was right.

It was long since she had travelled that way, and she was looking for a landmark--a gray stone that stood somewhere not far from where she was, and near which she knew that there was a footpath that led, not directly to the Château, but to the old deserted watch-tower of Beaumanoir.

That stone marked a spot not to be forgotten by her, for it was the memorial of a deed of wickedness now only remembered by herself and by God. La Corriveau cared nothing for the recollection. It was not terrible to her, and God made no sign; but in his great book of account, of which the life of every man and woman forms a page, it was written down and remembered.

On the secret tablets of our memory, which is the book of our life, every thought, word, and deed, good or evil, is written down indelibly and forever; and the invisible pen goes on writing day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, every thought, even the idlest, every fancy the most evanescent: nothing is left out of our book of life which will be our record in judgment! When that book is opened and no secrets are hid, what son or daughter of Adam is there who will not need to say, “God be merciful?”

La Corriveau came suddenly upon the gray stone. It startled her, for its rude contour, standing up in the pale moonlight, put on the appearance of a woman. She thought she was discovered, and she heard a noise; but another glance reassured her. She recognized the stone, and the noise she had heard was only the scurrying of a hare among the dry leaves.

The habitans held this spot to be haunted by the wailing spirit of a woman in a gray robe, who had been poisoned by a jealous lover. La Corriveau gave him sweatmeats of the manna of St. Nicholas, which the woman ate from his hand, and fell dead at his feet in this trysting-place, where they met for the last time. The man fled to the forest, haunted by a remorseful conscience, and died a retributive death: he fell sick, and was devoured by wolves. La Corriveau alone of mortals held the terrible secret.

La Corriveau gave a low laugh as she saw the pale outline of the woman resolve itself into the gray stone. “The dead come not again!” muttered she, “and if they do she will soon have a companion to share her midnight walks round the Château!” La Corriveau had no conscience; she knew not remorse, and would probably have felt no great fear had that pale spirit really appeared at that moment, to tax her with wicked complicity in her murder.

The clock of the Château struck twelve. Its reverberations sounded far into the night as La Corriveau emerged stealthily out of the forest, crouching on the shady side of the high garden hedges, until she reached the old watch-tower, which stood like a dead sentinel at his post on the flank of the Château.

There was an open doorway, on each side of which lay a heap of fallen stones. This was the entrance into a square room, dark and yawning as a cavern. It was traversed by one streak of moonshine, which struggled through a grated window set in the thick wall.

La Corriveau stood for a few moments looking intently into the gloomy ruin; then, casting a sharp glance behind her, she entered. Tired with her long walk through the forest, she flung herself upon a stone seat to rest, and to collect her thoughts for the execution of her terrible mission.

The dogs of the Château barked vehemently, as if the very air bore some ominous taint; but La Corriveau knew she was safe: they were shut up in the courtyard, and could not trace her to the tower. A harsh voice or two and the sound of whips presently silenced the barking dogs, and all was still again.

She had got into the tower unseen and unheard. “They say there is an eye that sees everything,” muttered she, “and an ear that hears our very thoughts. If God sees and hears, he does nothing to prevent me from accomplishing my end; and he will not interfere to-night! No, not for all the prayers she may utter, which will not be many more! God if there be one--lets La Corriveau live, and will let the lady of Beaumanoir die!”

There was a winding stair of stone, narrow and tortuous, in one corner of the tower. It led upwards to the roof and downwards to a deep vault which was arched and groined. Its heavy, rough columns supported the tower above, and divided the vaults beneath. These vaults had formerly served as magazines for provisions and stores for the use of the occupants of the Château upon occasions when they had to retire for safety from a sudden irruption of Iroquois.

La Corriveau, after a short rest, got up with a quick, impatient movement. She went over to an arched doorway upon which her eyes had been fixed for several minutes. “The way is down there,” she muttered; “now for a light!”

She found the entrance to the stair open; she passed in, closing the door behind her so that the glimmer might not be seen by any chance stroller, and struck a light. The reputation which the tower had of being haunted made the servants very shy of entering it, even in the day-time; and the man was considered bold indeed who came near it after dark.

With her candle in her hand, La Corriveau descended slowly into the gloomy vault. It was a large cavern of stone, a very habitation of darkness, which seemed to swallow up the feeble light she carried. It was divided into three portions, separated by rough columns.

A spring of water trickled in and trickled out of a great stone trough, ever full and overflowing with a soft, tinkling sound, like a clepsydra measuring the movements of eternity. The cool, fresh, living water diffused throughout the vaults an even, mild temperature the year round. The gardeners of the Château took advantage of this, and used the vault as a favorite storeroom for their crops of fruit and vegetables for winter use in the Château.

La Corriveau went resolutely forward, as one who knew what she sought and where to find it, and presently stood in front of a recess containing a wooden panel similar to that in the Château, and movable in the same manner. She considered it for some moments, muttering to herself as she held aloft the candle to inspect it closely and find the spring by which it was moved.

La Corriveau had been carefully instructed by Mère Malheur in every point regarding the mechanism of this door. She had no difficulty in finding the secret of its working. A slight touch sufficed when the right place was known. She pressed it hard with her hand; the panel swung open, and behind it gaped a dark, narrow passage leading to the secret chamber of Caroline.

She entered without hesitation, knowing whither it led. It was damp and stifling. Her candle burned dimmer and dimmer in the impure air of the long shut-up passage. There were, however, no other obstacles in her way. The passage was unincumbered; but the low arch, scarcely over her own height, seemed to press down upon her as she passed along, as if to prevent her progress. The fearless, wicked heart bore her up,--nothing worse than herself could meet her; and she felt neither fear at what lay before her nor remorse at what was behind.

The distance to be traversed was not far, although it seemed to her impatience to be interminable. Mère Malheur, with her light heels, could once run through it in a minute, to a tryst in the old tower. La Corriveau was thrice that time in groping her way along it before she came to a heavy, iron-ribbed door set in a deep arch, which marked the end of the passage.

That black, forbidding door was the dividing of light from darkness, of good from evil, of innocence from guilt. On one side of it, in a chamber of light, sat a fair girl, confiding, generous, and deceived only through her excess of every virtue; on the other, wickedness, fell and artful, was approaching with stealthy footsteps through an unseen way, and stood with hand upraised to knock, but incapable of entering in unless that unsuspecting girl removed the bar.

As the hour of midnight approached, one sound after another died away in the Château. Caroline, who had sat counting the hours and watching the spectral moon as it flickered among the drifting clouds, withdrew from the window with a trembling step, like one going to her doom.

She descended to the secret chamber, where she had appointed to meet her strange visitor and hear from strange lips the story that would be told her.

She attired herself with care, as a woman will in every extremity of life. Her dark raven hair was simply arranged, and fell in thick masses over her neck and shoulders. She put on a robe of soft, snow-white texture, and by an impulse she yielded to, but could not explain, bound her waist with a black sash, like a strain of mourning in a song of innocence. She wore no ornaments save a ring, the love-gift of Bigot, which she never parted with, but wore with a morbid anticipation that its promises would one day be fulfilled. She clung to it as a talisman that would yet conjure away her sorrows; and it did! but alas! in a way little anticipated by the constant girl! A blast from hell was at hand to sweep away her young life, and with it all her earthly troubles.

She took up a guitar mechanically, as it were, and as her fingers wandered over the strings, a bar or two of the strain, sad as the sigh of a broken heart, suggested an old ditty she had loved formerly, when her heart was full of sunshine and happiness, when her fancy used to indulge in the luxury of melancholic musings, as every happy, sensitive, and imaginative girl will do as a counterpoise to her high-wrought feelings.

In a low voice, sweet and plaintive as the breathings of an Aeolian harp, Caroline sang her Minne-song:--

“'A linnet sat upon a thorn At evening chime. Its sweet refrain fell like the rain Of summer-time. Of summer-time when roses bloomed, And bright above A rainbow spanned my fairy-land Of hope and love! Of hope and love! O linnet, cease Thy mocking theme! I ne'er picked up the golden cup In all my dream! In all my dream I missed the prize Should have been mine; And dreams won't die! though fain would I, And make no sign!'”

The lamps burned brightly, shedding a cheerful light upon the landscapes and figures woven into the tapestry behind which was concealed the black door that was to admit La Corriveau.

It was oppressively still. Caroline listened with mouth and ears for some sound of approaching footsteps until her heart beat like the swift stroke of a hammer, as it sent the blood throbbing through her temples with a rush that almost overpowered her.

She was alone, and lonely beyond expression. Down in these thick foundations no sound penetrated to break the terrible monotony of the silence around her, except the dull, solemn voice of the bell striking the hour of midnight.

Caroline had passed a sleepless night after the visit of Mère Malheur, sometimes tossing on her solitary couch, Sometimes starting up in terror. She rose and threw herself despairingly upon her knees, calling on Christ to pardon her, and on the Mother of Mercies to plead for her, sinner that she was, whose hour of shame and punishment had come!

The mysterious letter brought by Mère Malheur, announcing that her place of concealment was to be searched by the Governor, excited her liveliest apprehensions. But that faded into nothingness in comparison with the absolute terror that seized her at the thoughts of the speedy arrival of her father in the Colony.

Caroline, overwhelmed with a sense of shame and contrition, pictured to herself in darkest colors the anger of her father at the dishonor she had brought upon his unsullied name.

She sat down, she rose up, she walked her solitary chamber, and knelt passionately on the floor, covering her face with her hands, crying to the Madonna for pity and protection.

Poor self-accuser! The hardest and most merciless wretch who ever threw stones at a woman was pitiful in comparison with Caroline's inexorable condemnation of herself.

Yet her fear was not on her own account. She could have kissed her father's hand and submitted humbly to death itself, if he chose to inflict it; but she trembled most at the thought of a meeting between the fiery Baron and the haughty Intendant. One or the other, or both of them, she felt instinctively, must die, should the Baron discover that Bigot had been the cause of the ruin of his idolized child. She trembled for both, and prayed God that she might die in their stead and the secret of her shame never be known to her fond father.

A dull sound, like footsteps shuffling in the dark passage behind the arras, struck her ear; she knew her strange visitant was come. She started up, clasping her hands hard together as she listened, wondering who and what like she might be. She suspected no harm,--for who could desire to harm her who had never injured a living being? Yet there she stood on the one side of that black door of doom, while the calamity of her life stood on the other side like a tigress ready to spring through.

A low knock, twice repeated on the thick door behind the arras, drew her at once to her feet. She trembled violently as she lifted up the tapestry; something rushed through her mind telling her not to do it. Happy had it been for her never to have opened that fatal door!

She hesitated for a moment, but the thought of her father and the impending search of the Château flashed suddenly upon her mind. The visitant, whoever she might be, professed to be a friend, and could, she thought, have no motive to harm her.

Caroline, with a sudden impulse, pushed aside the fastening of the door, and uttering the words, “Dieu! protège moi!” stood face to face with La Corriveau.

The bright lamp shone full on the tall figure of the strange visitor, and Caroline, whose fears had anticipated some uncouth sight of terror, was surprised to see only a woman dressed in the simple garb of a peasant, with a little basket on her arm, enter quietly through the secret door.

The eyes of La Corriveau glared for a moment with fiendish curiosity upon the young girl who stood before her like one of God's angels. She measured her from head to foot, noted every fold of her white robe, every flexure of her graceful form, and drank in the whole beauty and innocence of her aspect with a feeling of innate spite at aught so fair and good. On her thin, cruel lips there played a smile as the secret thought hovered over them in an unspoken whisper,--“She will make a pretty corpse! Brinvilliers and La Voisin never mingled drink for a fairer victim than I will crown with roses to-night!”

Caroline retreated a few steps, frightened and trembling, as she encountered the glittering eyes and sinister smile of La Corriveau. The woman observed it, and instantly changed her mien to one more natural and sympathetic; for she comprehended fully the need of disarming suspicion and of winning the confidence of her victim to enable her more surely to destroy her.

Caroline, reassured by a second glance at her visitor, thought she had been mistaken in her first impression. The peasant's dress, the harmless basket, the quiet manner assumed by La Corriveau as she stood in a respectful attitude as if waiting to be spoken to, banished all fears from the mind of Caroline, and left her only curious to know the issue of this mysterious visit.

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XLI. A DEED WITHOUT A NAME

Caroline, profoundly agitated, rested her hands on the back of a chair for support, and regarded La Corriveau for some moments without speaking. She tried to frame a question of some introductory kind, but could not. But the pent-up feelings came out at last in a gush straight from the heart.

“Did you write this?” said she, falteringly, to La Corriveau, and holding out the letter so mysteriously placed in her hand by Mère Malheur. “Oh, tell me, is it true?”

La Corriveau did not reply except by a sign of assent, and standing upright waited for further question.

Caroline looked at her again wonderingly. That a simple peasant-woman could have indited such a letter, or could have known aught respecting her father, seemed incredible.

“In heaven's name, tell me who and what you are!” exclaimed she. “I never saw you before!”

“You have seen me before!” replied La Corriveau quietly.

Caroline looked at her amazedly, but did not recognize her. La Corriveau continued, “Your father is the Baron de St. Castin, and you, lady, would rather die than endure that he should find you in the Château of Beaumanoir. Ask me not how I know these things; you will not deny their truth; as for myself, I pretend not to be other than I seem.”

“Your dress is that of a peasant-woman, but your language is not the language of one. You are a lady in disguise visiting me in this strange fashion!” said Caroline, puzzled more than ever. Her thoughts at this instant reverted to the Intendant. “Why do you come here in this secret manner?” asked she.

“I do not appear other than I am,” replied La Corriveau evasively, “and I come in this secret manner because I could get access to you in no other way.”

“You said that I had seen you before; I have no knowledge or recollection of it,” remarked Caroline, looking fixedly at her.

“Yes, you saw me once in the wood of St. Valier. Do you remember the peasant-woman who was gathering mandrakes when you passed with your Indian guides, and who gave you milk to refresh you on the way?”

This seemed like a revelation to Caroline; she remembered the incident and the woman. La Corriveau had carefully put on the same dress she had worn that day.

“I do recollect!” replied Caroline, as a feeling of confidence welled up like a living spring within her. She offered La Corriveau her hand. “I thank you gratefully,” said she; “you were indeed kind to me that day in the forest, and I am sure you must mean kindly by me now.”

La Corriveau took the offered hand, but did not press it. She could not for the life of her, for she had not heart to return the pressure of a human hand. She saw her advantage, however, and kept it through the rest of the brief interview.

“I mean you kindly, lady,” replied she, softening her harsh voice as much as she could to a tone of sympathy, “and I come to help you out of your trouble.”

For a moment that cruel smile played on her thin lips again, but she instantly repressed it. “I am only a peasant-woman,” repeated she again, “but I bring you a little gift in my basket to show my good-will.” She put her hand in her basket, but did not withdraw it at the moment, as Caroline, thinking little of gifts but only of her father, exclaimed,--

“I am sure you mean well, but you have more important things to tell me of than a gift. Your letter spoke of my father. What, in God's name, have you to tell me of my father?”

La Corriveau withdrew her hand from the basket and replied, “He is on his way to New France in search of you. He knows you are here, lady.”

“In Beaumanoir? Oh, it cannot be! No one knows I am here!” exclaimed Caroline, clasping her hands in an impulse of alarm.

“Yes, more than you suppose, lady, else how did I know? Your father comes with the King's letters to take you hence and return with you to Acadia or to France.” La Corriveau placed her hand in her basket, but withdrew it again. It was not yet time.

“God help me, then!” exclaimed Caroline, shrinking with terror. “But the Intendant; what said you of the Intendant?”

“He is ordered de par le Roi to give you up to your father, and he will do so if you be not taken away sooner by the Governor.”

Caroline was nigh fainting at these words. “Sooner! how sooner?” asked she, faintly.

“The Governor has received orders from the King to search Beaumanoir from roof to foundation-stone, and he may come to-morrow, lady, and find you here.”

The words of La Corriveau struck like sharp arrows into the soul of the hapless girl.

“God help me, then!” exclaimed she, clasping her hands in agony. “Oh, that I were dead and buried where only my Judge could find me at the last day, for I have no hope, no claim upon man's mercy! The world will stone me, dead or living, and alas! I deserve my fate. It is not hard to die, but it is hard to bear the shame which will not die with me!”

She cast her eyes despairingly upward as she uttered this, and did not see the bitter smile return to the lips of La Corriveau, who stood upright, cold and immovable before her, with fingers twitching nervously, like the claws of a fury, in her little basket, while she whispered to herself, “Is it time, is it time?” but she took not out the bouquet yet.

Caroline came still nearer, with a sudden change of thought, and clutching the dress of La Corriveau, cried out, “O woman, is this all true? How can you know all this to be true of me, and you a stranger?”

“I know it of a certainty, and I am come to help you. I may not tell you by whom I know it; perhaps the Intendant himself has sent me,” replied La Corriveau, with a sudden prompting of the spirit of evil who stood beside her. “The Intendant will hide you from this search, if there be a sure place of concealment in New France.”

The reply sent a ray of hope across the mind of the agonized girl. She bounded with a sense of deliverance. It seemed so natural that Bigot, so deeply concerned in her concealment, should have sent this peasant woman to take her away, that she could not reflect at the moment how unlikely it was, nor could she, in her excitement, read the lie upon the cold face of La Corriveau.

She seized the explanation with the grasp of despair, as a sailor seizes the one plank which the waves have washed within his reach, when all else has sunk in the seas around him.

“Bigot sent you?” exclaimed Caroline, raising her hands, while her pale face was suddenly suffused with a flush of joy. “Bigot sent you to conduct me hence to a sure place of concealment? Oh, blessed messenger! I believe you now.” Her excited imagination outflew even the inventions of La Corriveau. “Bigot has heard of my peril, and sent you here at midnight to take me away to your forest home until this search be over. Is it not so? François Bigot did not forget me in my danger, even while he was away!”

“Yes, lady, the Intendant sent me to conduct you to St. Valier, to hide you there in a sure retreat until the search be over,” replied La Corriveau, calmly eyeing her from head to foot.

“It is like him! He is not unkind when left to himself. It is so like the François Bigot I once knew! But tell me, woman, what said he further? Did you see him, did you hear him? Tell me all he said to you.”

“I saw him, lady, and heard him,” replied La Corriveau, taking the bouquet in her fingers, “but he said little more than I have told you. The Intendant is a stern man, and gives few words save commands to those of my condition. But he bade me convey to you a token of his love; you would know its meaning, he said. I have it safe, lady, in this basket,--shall I give it to you?”

“A token of his love, of François Bigot's love to me! Are you a woman and could delay giving it so long? Why gave you it not at first? I should not have doubted you then. Oh, give it to me, and be blessed as the welcomest messenger that ever came to Beaumanoir!”

La Corriveau held her hand a moment more in the basket. Her dark features turned a shade paler, although not a nerve quivered as she plucked out a parcel carefully wrapped in silver tissue. She slipped off the cover, and held at arm's length towards the eager, expectant girl, the fatal bouquet of roses, beautiful to see as the fairest that ever filled the lap of Flora.

Caroline clasped it with both hands, exclaiming in a voice of exultation, while every feature radiated with joy, “It is the gift of God, and the return of François's love! All will yet be well!”

She pressed the glowing flowers to her lips with passionate kisses, breathed once or twice their mortal poison, and suddenly throwing back her head with her dark eyes fixed on vacancy, but holding the fatal bouquet fast in her hands, fell dead at the feet of La Corriveau.

A weird laugh, terrible and unsuppressed, rang around the walls of the secret chamber, where the lamps burned bright as ever; but the glowing pictures of the tapestry never changed a feature. Was it not strange that even those painted men should not have cried out at the sight of so pitiless a murder?

Caroline lay amid them all, the flush of joy still on her cheek, the smile not yet vanished from her lips. A pity for all the world, could it have seen her; but in that lonely chamber no eye pitied her.

But now a more cruel thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's lifeless form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate furies that belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The blood of generations of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in her veins. The spirits of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired her with new fury. She was at this moment like a pantheress that has brought down her prey and stands over it to rend it in pieces.

Caroline lay dead, dead beyond all doubt, never to be resuscitated, except in the resurrection of the just. La Corriveau bent over her and felt her heart; it was still. No sign of breath flickered on lip or nostril.

The poisoner knew she was dead, but something still woke her suspicions, as with a new thought she drew back and looked again at the beauteous form before her. Suddenly, as if to make assurance doubly sure, she plucked the sharp Italian stiletto from her bosom, and with a firm, heavy hand plunged it twice into the body of the lifeless girl. “If there be life there,” she said, “it too shall die! La Corriveau leaves no work of hers half done!”

A faint trickle of blood in red threads ran down the snow-white vestment, and that was all! The heart had forever ceased to beat, and the blood to circulate. The golden bowl was broken and the silver cord of life loosed forever, and yet this last indignity would have recalled the soul of Caroline, could she have been conscious of it. But all was well with her now; not in the sense of the last joyous syllables she spoke in life, but in a higher, holier sense, as when God interprets our words, and not men, all was well with her now.

The gaunt, iron-visaged woman knelt down upon her knees, gazing with unshrinking eyes upon the face of her victim, as if curiously marking the effect of a successful experiment of the aqua tofana.

It was the first time she had ever dared to administer that subtle poison in the fashion of La Borgia.

“The aqua tofana does its work like a charm!” muttered she. “That vial was compounded by Beatrice Spara, and is worthy of her skill and more sure than her stiletto! I was frantic to use that weapon, for no purpose than to redden my hands with the work of a low bravo!”

A few drops of blood were on the hand of La Corriveau. She wiped them impatiently upon the garment of Caroline, where it left the impress of her fingers upon the snowy muslin. No pity for her pallid victim, who lay with open eyes looking dumbly upon her, no remorse for her act touched the stony heart of La Corriveau.

The clock of the Château struck one. The solitary stroke of the bell reverberated like an accusing voice through the house, but failed to awaken one sleeper to a discovery of the black tragedy that had just taken place under its roof.

That sound had often struck sadly upon the ear of Caroline, as she prolonged her vigil of prayer through the still watches of the night. Her ear was dull enough now to all earthly sound! But the toll of the bell reached the ear of La Corriveau, rousing her to the need of immediately effecting her escape, now that her task was done.

She sprang up and looked narrowly around the chamber. She marked with envious malignity the luxury and magnificence of its adornments. Upon a chair lay her own letter sent to Caroline by the hands of Mère Malheur. La Corriveau snatched it up. It was what she sought. She tore it in pieces and threw the fragments from her; but with a sudden thought, as if not daring to leave even the fragments upon the floor, she gathered them up hastily and put them in her basket with the bouquet of roses, which she wrested from the dead fingers of Caroline in order to carry it away and scatter the fatal flowers in the forest.

She pulled open the drawers of the escritoire to search for money, but finding none, was too wary to carry off aught else. The temptation lay sore upon her to carry away the ring from the finger of Caroline. She drew it off the pale wasted finger, but a cautious consideration restrained her. She put it on again, and would not take it.

“It would only lead to discovery!” muttered she. “I must take nothing but myself and what belongs to me away from Beaumanoir, and the sooner the better!”

La Corriveau, with her basket again upon her arm, turned to give one last look of fiendish satisfaction at the corpse, which lay like a dead angel slain in God's battle. The bright lamps were glaring full upon her still beautiful but sightless eyes, which, wide open, looked, even in death, reproachfully yet forgivingly upon their murderess.

Something startled La Corriveau in that look. She turned hastily away, and, relighting her candle, passed through the dark archway of the secret door, forgetting to close it after her, and retraced her steps along the stone passage until she came to the watch-tower, where she dashed out her light.

Creeping around the tower in the dim moonlight, she listened long and anxiously at door and window to discover if all was still about the Château. Not a sound was heard but the water of the little brook gurgling in its pebbly bed, which seemed to be all that was awake on this night of death.

La Corriveau emerged cautiously from the tower. She crept like a guilty thing under the shadow of the hedge, and got away unperceived by the same road she had come. She glided like a dark spectre through the forest of Beaumanoir, and returned to the city to tell Angélique des Meloises that the arms of the Intendant were now empty and ready to clasp her as his bride; that her rival was dead, and she had put herself under bonds forever to La Corriveau as the price of innocent blood.

La Corriveau reached the city in the gray of the morning; a thick fog lay like a winding-sheet upon the face of nature. The broad river, the lofty rocks, every object, great and small, was hidden from view.

To the intense satisfaction of La Corriveau, the fog concealed her return to the house of Mère Malheur, whence, after a brief repose, and with a command to the old crone to ask no questions yet, she sallied forth again to carry to Angélique the welcome news that her rival was dead.

No one observed La Corriveau as she passed, in her peasant dress, through the misty streets, which did not admit of an object being discerned ten paces off.

Angélique was up. She had not gone to bed that night, and sat feverishly on the watch, expecting the arrival of La Corriveau.

She had counted the minutes of the silent hours of the night as they passed by her in a terrible panorama. She pictured to her imagination the successive scenes of the tragedy which was being accomplished at Beaumanoir.

The hour of midnight culminated over her head, and looking out of her window at the black, distant hills, in the recesses of which she knew lay the Château, her agitation grew intense. She knew at that hour La Corriveau must be in the presence of her victim. Would she kill her? Was she about it now? The thought fastened on Angélique like a wild beast, and would not let go. She thought of the Intendant, and was filled with hope; she thought of the crime of murder and shrunk now that it was being done.

It was in this mood she waited and watched for the return of her bloody messenger. She heard the cautious foot on the stone steps. She knew by a sure instinct whose it was, and rushed down to admit her.

They met at the door, and without a word spoken, one eager glance of Angélique at the dark face of La Corriveau drank in the whole fatal story. Caroline de St. Castin was dead! Her rival in the love of the Intendant was beyond all power of rivalry now! The lofty doors of ambitious hope stood open--what! to admit the queen of beauty and of society? No! but a murderess, who would be forever haunted with the fear of justice! It seemed at this moment as if the lights had all gone out in the palaces and royal halls where her imagination had so long run riot, and she saw only dark shadows, and heard inarticulate sounds of strange voices babbling in her ear. It was the unspoken words of her own troubled thoughts and the terrors newly awakened in her soul!

Angélique seized the hand of La Corriveau, not without a shudder. She drew her hastily up to her chamber and thrust her into a chair. Placing both hands upon the shoulders of La Corriveau, she looked wildly in her face, exclaiming in a half exultant, half piteous tone, “Is it done? Is it really done? I read it in your eyes! I know you have done the deed! Oh, La Corriveau!”

The grim countenance of the woman relaxed into a half smile of scorn and surprise at the unexpected weakness which she instantly noted in Angélique's manner.

“Yes, it is done!” replied she, coldly, “and it is well done! But, by the manna of St. Nicholas!” exclaimed she, starting from the chair and drawing her gaunt figure up to its full height, while her black eyes shot daggers, “you look, Mademoiselle, as if you repented its being done. Do you?”

“Yes! No! No, not now!” replied Angélique, touched as with a hot iron. “I will not repent now it is done! that were folly, needless, dangerous, now it is done! But is she dead? Did you wait to see if she were really dead? People look dead sometimes and are not! Tell me truly, and conceal nothing!”

“La Corriveau does not her work by halves, Mademoiselle, neither do you; only you talk of repentance after it is done, I do not! That is all the difference! Be satisfied; the lady of Beaumanoir is dead! I made doubly sure of that, and deserve a double reward from you!”

“Reward! You shall have all you crave! But what a secret between you and me!” Angélique looked at La Corriveau as if this thought now struck her for the first time. She was in this woman's power. She shivered from head to foot. “Your reward for this night's work is here,” faltered she, placing her hand over a small box. She did not touch it, it seemed as if it would burn her. It was heavy with pieces of gold. “They are uncounted,” continued she. “Take it, it is all yours!”

La Corriveau snatched the box off the table and held it to her bosom. Angélique continued, in a monotonous tone, as one conning a lesson by rote,--“Use it prudently. Do not seem to the world to be suddenly rich: it might be inquired into. I have thought of everything during the past night, and I remember I had to tell you that when I gave you the gold. Use it prudently! Something else, too, I was to tell you, but I think not of it at this moment.”

“Thanks, and no thanks, Mademoiselle!” replied La Corriveau, in a hard tone. “Thanks for the reward so fully earned. No thanks for your faint heart that robs me of my well-earned meed of applause for a work done so artistically and perfectly that La Brinvilliers, or La Borgia herself, might envy me, a humble paysanne of St. Valier!”

La Corriveau looked proudly up as she said this, for she felt herself to be anything but a humble paysanne. She nourished a secret pride in her heart over the perfect success of her devilish skill in poisoning.

“I give you whatever praise you desire,” replied Angélique, mechanically. “But you have not told me how it was done. Sit down again,” continued she, with a touch of her imperative manner, “and tell me all and every incident of what you have done.”

“You will not like to hear it. Better be content with the knowledge that your rival was a dangerous and a beautiful one.” Angélique looked up at this. “Better be content to know that she is dead, without asking any more.”

“No, you shall tell me everything. I cannot rest unless I know all!”

“Nor after you do know all will you rest!” replied La Corriveau slightingly, for she despised the evident trepidation of Angélique.

“No matter! you shall tell me. I am calm now.” Angélique made a great effort to appear calm while she listened to the tale of tragedy in which she had played so deep a part.

La Corriveau, observing that the gust of passion was blown over, sat down in the chair opposite Angélique, and placing one hand on the knee of her listener, as if to hold her fast, began the terrible recital.

She gave Angélique a graphic, minute, and not untrue account of all she had done at Beaumanoir, dwelling with fierce unction on the marvellous and sudden effects of the aqua tofana, not sparing one detail of the beauty and innocent looks of her victim; and repeating, with a mocking laugh, the deceit she had practised upon her with regard to the bouquet as a gift from the Intendant.

Angélique listened to the terrible tale, drinking it in with eyes, mouth, and ears. Her countenance changed to a mask of ugliness, wonderful in one by nature so fair to see. Cloud followed cloud over her face and eyes as the dread recital went on, and her imagination accompanied it with vivid pictures of every phase of the diabolical crime.

When La Corriveau described the presentation of the bouquet as a gift of Bigot, and the deadly sudden effect which followed its joyous acceptance, the thoughts of Caroline in her white robe, stricken as by a thunderbolt, shook Angélique with terrible emotion. But when La Corriveau, coldly and with a bitter spite at her softness, described with a sudden gesticulation and eyes piercing her through and through, the strokes of the poniard upon the lifeless body of her victim, Angélique sprang up, clasped her hands together, and, with a cry of woe, fell senseless upon the floor.

“She is useless now,” said La Corriveau, rising and spurning Angélique with her foot. “I deemed she had courage to equal her wickedness. She is but a woman after all,--doomed to be the slave of some man through life, while aspiring to command all men! It is not of such flesh that La Corriveau is made!”

La Corriveau stood a few moments, reflecting what was best to be done.

All things considered, she decided to leave Angélique to come to of herself, while she made the best of her way back to the house of Mère Malheur, with the intention, which she carried out, of returning to St. Valier with her infamous reward that very day.

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XLII. “LET'S TALK OF GRAVES AND WORMS AND EPITAPHS.”

About the hour that La Corriveau emerged from the gloomy woods of Beauport, on her return to the city, the night of the murder of Caroline, two horsemen were battering at full speed on the highway that led to Charlebourg. Their dark figures were irrecognizable in the dim moonlight. They rode fast and silent, like men having important business before them, which demanded haste; business which both fully understood and cared not now to talk about.

And so it was. Bigot and Cadet, after the exchange of a few words about the hour of midnight, suddenly left the wine, the dice, and the gay company at the Palace, and mounting their horses, rode, unattended by groom or valet, in the direction of Beaumanoir.

Bigot, under the mask of gaiety and indifference, had felt no little alarm at the tenor of the royal despatch, and at the letter of the Marquise de Pompadour concerning Caroline de St. Castin.

The proximate arrival of Caroline's father in the Colony was a circumstance ominous of trouble. The Baron was no trifler, and would as soon choke a prince as a beggar, to revenge an insult to his personal honor or the honor of his house.

Bigot cared little for that, however. The Intendant was no coward, and could brazen a thing out with any man alive. But there was one thing which he knew he could not brazen out or fight out, or do anything but miserably fail in, should it come to the question. He had boldly and wilfully lied at the Governor's council-table--sitting as the King's councillor among gentlemen of honor--when he declared that he knew not the hiding-place of Caroline de St. Castin. It would cover him with eternal disgrace, as a gentleman, to be detected in such a flagrant falsehood. It would ruin him as a courtier in the favor of the great Marquise should she discover that, in spite of his denials of the fact, he had harbored and concealed the missing lady in his own château.

Bigot was sorely perplexed over this turn of affairs. He uttered a thousand curses upon all concerned in it, excepting upon Caroline herself, for although vexed at her coming to him at all, he could not find it in his heart to curse her. But cursing or blessing availed nothing now. Time was pressing, and he must act.

That Caroline would be sought after in every nook and corner of the land, he knew full well, from the character of La Corne St. Luc and of her father. His own château would not be spared in the general search, and he doubted if the secret chamber would remain a secret from the keen eyes of these men. He surmised that others knew of its existence besides himself: old servitors, and women who had passed in and out of it in times gone by. Dame Tremblay, who did know of it, was not to be trusted in a great temptation. She was in heart the Charming Josephine still, and could be bribed or seduced by any one who bid high enough for her.

Bigot had no trust whatever in human nature. He felt he had no guarantee against a discovery, farther than interest or fear barred the door against inquiry. He could not rely for a moment upon the inviolability of his own house. La Corne St. Luc would demand to search, and he, bound by his declarations of non-complicity in the abduction of Caroline, could offer no reason for refusal without arousing instant suspicion; and La Corne was too sagacious not to fasten upon the remotest trace of Caroline and follow it up to a complete discovery.

She could not, therefore, remain longer in the Château--this was absolute; and he must, at whatever cost and whatever risk, remove her to a fresh place of concealment, until the storm blew over, or some other means of escape from the present difficulty offered themselves in the chapter of accidents.

In accordance with this design, Bigot, under pretence of business, had gone off the very next day after the meeting of the Governor's Council, in the direction of the Three Rivers, to arrange with a band of Montagnais, whom he could rely upon, for the reception of Caroline, in the disguise of an Indian girl, with instructions to remove their wigwams immediately and take her off with them to the wild, remote valley of the St. Maurice.

The old Indian chief, eager to oblige the Intendant, had assented willingly to his proposal, promising the gentlest treatment of the lady, and a silent tongue concerning her.

Bigot was impressive in his commands upon these points, and the chief pledged his faith upon them, delighted beyond measure by the promise of an ample supply of powder, blankets, and provisions for his tribe, while the Intendant added an abundance of all such delicacies as could be forwarded, for the use and comfort of the lady.

To carry out this scheme without observation, Bigot needed the help of a trusty friend, one whom he could thoroughly rely upon, to convey Caroline secretly away from Beaumanoir, and place her in the keeping of the Montagnais, as well as to see to the further execution of his wishes for her concealment and good treatment.

Bigot had many friends,--men living on his bounty, who ought only to have been too happy to obey his slightest wishes,--friends bound to him by disgraceful secrets, and common interests, and pleasures. But he could trust none of them with the secret of Caroline de St. Castin.

He felt a new and unwonted delicacy in regard to her. Her name was dear to him, her fame even was becoming dearer. To his own surprise it troubled him now as it had never troubled him before. He would not have her name defiled in the mouths of such men as drank his wine daily and nightly, and disputed the existence of any virtue in woman.

Bigot ground his teeth as he muttered to himself that they might make a mock of whatever other women they pleased. He himself could out-do them all in coarse ribaldry of the sex, but they should not make a mock and flash obscene jests at the mention of Caroline de St. Castin! They should never learn her name. He could not trust one of them with the secret of her removal. And yet some one of them must perforce be entrusted with it!

He conned over the names of his associates one by one, and one by one condemned them all as unworthy of confidence in a matter where treachery might possibly be made more profitable than fidelity. Bigot was false himself to the heart's core, and believed in no man's truth.

He was an acute judge of men. He read their motives, their bad ones especially, with the accuracy of a Mephistopheles, and with the same cold contempt for every trace of virtue.

Varin was a cunning knave, he said, ambitious of the support of the Church; communing with his aunt, the Superior of the Ursulines, whom he deceived, and who was not without hope of himself one day rising to be Intendant. He would place no such secret in the keeping of Varin!

Penisault was a sordid dog. He would cheat the Montagnais of his gifts, and so discontent them with their charge. He had neither courage nor spirit for an adventure. He was in his right place superintending the counters of the Friponne. He despised Penisault, while glad to use him in the basest offices of the Grand Company.

Le Mercier was a pickthank, angling after the favor of La Pompadour,--a pretentious knave, as hollow as one of his own mortars. He suspected him of being a spy of hers upon himself. Le Mercier would be only too glad to send La Pompadour red-hot information of such an important secret as that of Caroline, and she would reward it as good service to the King and to herself.

Deschenaux was incapable of keeping a secret of any kind when he got drunk, or in a passion, which was every day. His rapacity reached to the very altar. He would rob a church, and was one who would rather take by force than favor. He would strike a Montagnais who would ask for a blanket more than he had cheated him with. He would not trust Deschenaux.

De Pean, the quiet fox, was wanted to look after that desperate gallant, Le Gardeur de Repentigny, who was still in the Palace, and must be kept there by all the seductions of wine, dice, and women, until we have done with him. De Pean was the meanest spirit of them all. “He would kiss my foot in the morning and sell me at night for a handful of silver,” said Bigot. Villains, every one of them, who would not scruple to advance their own interests with La Pompadour by his betrayal in telling her such a secret as that of Caroline's.

De Repentigny had honor and truth in him, and could be entirely trusted if he promised to serve a friend. But Bigot dared not name to him a matter of this kind. He would spurn it, drunk as he was. He was still in all his instincts a gentleman and a soldier. He could only be used by Bigot through an abuse of his noblest qualities. He dared not broach such a scheme to Le Gardeur de Repentigny!

Among his associates there was but one who, in spite of his brutal manners and coarse speech, perhaps because of these, Bigot would trust as a friend, to help him in a serious emergency like the present.

Cadet, the Commissary General of New France, was faithful to Bigot as a fierce bull-dog to his master. Cadet was no hypocrite, nay, he may have appeared to be worse than in reality he was. He was bold and outspoken, rapacious of other men's goods, and as prodigal of his own. Clever withal, fearless, and fit for any bold enterprise. He ever allowed himself to be guided by the superior intellect of Bigot, whom he regarded as the prince of good fellows, and swore by him, profanely enough, on all occasions, as the shrewdest head and the quickest hand to turn over money in New France.

Bigot could trust Cadet. He had only to whisper a few words in his ear to see him jump up from the table where he was playing cards, dash his stakes with a sweep of his hand into the lap of his antagonist, a gift or a forfeit, he cared not which, for not finishing the game. In three minutes Cadet was booted, with his heavy riding-whip in his hand ready to mount his horse and accompany Bigot “to Beaumanoir or to hell,” he said, “if he wanted to go there.”

In the short space of time, while the grooms saddled their horses, Bigot drew Cadet aside and explained to him the situation of his affairs, informing him, in a few words, who the lady was who lived in such retirement in the Château, and of his denial of the fact before the Council and Governor. He told him of the letters of the King and of La Pompadour respecting Caroline, and of the necessity of removing her at once far out of reach before the actual search for her was begun.

Cadet's cynical eyes flashed in genuine sympathy with Bigot, and he laid his heavy hand upon his shoulder and uttered a frank exclamation of admiration at his ruse to cheat La Pompadour and La Galissonière both.

“By St. Picot!” said he, “I would rather go without dinner for a month than you should not have asked me, Bigot, to help you out of this scrape. What if you did lie to that fly-catching beggar at the Castle of St. Louis, who has not conscience to take a dishonest stiver from a cheating Albany Dutchman! Where was the harm in it? Better lie to him than tell the truth to La Pompadour about that girl! Egad! Madame Fish would serve you as the Iroquois served my fat clerk at Chouagen--make roast meat of you--if she knew it! Such a pother about a girl! Damn the women, always, I say, Bigot! A man is never out of hot water when he has to do with them!”

Striking Bigot's hand hard with his own, he promised; wet or dry, through flood or fire, to ride with him to Beaumanoir, and take the girl, or lady,--he begged the Intendant's pardon,--and by such ways as he alone knew he would, in two days, place her safely among the Montagnais, and order them at once, without an hour's delay, to pull up stakes and remove their wigwams to the tuque of the St. Maurice, where Satan himself could not find her. And the girl might remain there for seven years without ever being heard tell of by any white person in the Colony.

Bigot and Cadet rode rapidly forward until they came to the dark forest, where the faint outline of road, barely visible, would have perplexed Bigot to have kept it alone in the night. But Cadet was born in Charlebourg; he knew every path, glade, and dingle in the forest of Beaumanoir, and rode on without drawing bridle.

Bigot, in his fiery eagerness, had hitherto ridden foremost. Cadet now led the way, dashing under the boughs of the great trees that overhung the road. The tramp of their horses woke the echoes of the woods. But they were not long in reaching the park of Beaumanoir.

They saw before them the tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Château, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,--ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral.

The watchful old porter at the gate was instantly on foot to see who came at that hour, and was surprised enough at sight of his master and the Sieur Cadet, without retinue or even a groom to accompany them.

They dismounted and tied their horses outside the gate. “Run to the Château, Marcele, without making the least noise,” said Bigot. “Call none of the servants, but rap gently at the door of Dame Tremblay. Bid her rise instantly, without waking any one. Say the Intendant desires to see her. I expect guests from the city.”

The porter returned with the information that Dame Tremblay had got up and was ready to receive his Excellency.

Bidding old Marcele take care of the horses, they walked across the lawn to the Château, at the door of which stood Dame Tremblay, hastily dressed, courtesying and trembling at this sudden summons to receive the Intendant and Sieur Cadet.

“Good night, dame!” said Bigot, in a low tone, “conduct us instantly to the grand gallery.”

“Oh, your Excellency!” replied the dame, courtesying, “I am your humble servant at all times, day and night, as it is my duty and my pleasure to serve my master!”

“Well, then!” returned Bigot, impatiently, “let us go in and make no noise.”

The three, Dame Tremblay leading the way with a candle in each hand, passed up the broad stair and into the gallery communicating with the apartments of Caroline. The dame set her candles on the table and stood with her hands across her apron in a submissive attitude, waiting the orders of her master.

“Dame!” said he, “I think you are a faithful servant. I have trusted you with much. Can I trust you with a greater matter still?”

“Oh, your Excellency! I would die to serve so noble and generous a master! It is a servant's duty!”

“Few servants think so, nor do I! But you have been faithful to your charge respecting this poor lady within, have you not, dame?” Bigot looked as if his eyes searched her very vitals.

“O Lord! O Lord!” thought the dame, turning pale. “He has heard about the visit of that cursed Mère Malheur, and he has come to hang me up for it in the gallery!” She stammered out in reply, “Oh, yes! I have been faithful to my charge about the lady, your Excellency! I have not failed wilfully or negligently in any one point, I assure you! I have been at once careful and kind to her, as you bade me to be, your Excellency. Indeed, I could not be otherwise to a live angel in the house like her!”

“So I believe, dame!” said Bigot, in a tone of approval that quite lifted her heart. This spontaneous praise of Caroline touched him somewhat. “You have done well! Now can you keep another secret, dame?”

“A secret! and entrusted to me by your Excellency!” replied she, in a voice of wonder at such a question. “The marble statue in the grotto is not closer than I am, your Excellency. I was always too fond of a secret ever to part with it! When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport I never told, even in confession, who they were who--”

“Tut! I will trust you, dame, better than I would have trusted the Charming Josephine! If all tales be true, you were a gay girl, dame, and a handsome one in those days, I have heard!” added the Intendant, with well-planned flattery.

A smile and a look of intelligence between the dame and Bigot followed this sally, while Cadet had much to do to keep in one of the hearty horse-laughs he used to indulge in, and which would have roused the whole Château.

The flattery of the Intendant quite captivated the dame. “I will go through fire and water to serve your Excellency, if you want me,” said she. “What shall I do to oblige your Excellency?”

“Well, dame, you must know then that the Sieur Cadet and I have come to remove that dear lady from the Château to another place, where it is needful for her to go for the present time; and if you are questioned about her, mind you are to say she never was here, and you know nothing of her!”

“I will not only say it,” replied the dame with promptness, “I will swear it until I am black in the face if you command me, your Excellency! Poor, dear lady! may I not ask where she is going?”

“No, she will be all right! I will tell you in due time. It is needful for people to change sometimes, you know, dame! You comprehend that! You had to manage matters discreetly when you were the Charming Josephine. I dare say you had to change, too, sometimes! Every woman has an intrigue once, at least, in her lifetime, and wants a change. But this lady is not clever like the Charming Josephine, therefore we have to be clever for her!”

The dame laughed prudently yet knowingly at this, while Bigot continued, “Now you understand all! Go to her chamber, dame. Present our compliments with our regrets for disturbing her at this hour. Tell her that the Intendant and the Sieur Cadet desire to see her on important business.”

Dame Tremblay, with a broad smile all over her countenance at her master's jocular allusions to the Charming Josephine, left at once to carry her message to the chamber of Caroline.

She passed out, while the two gentlemen waited in the gallery, Bigot anxious but not doubtful of his influence to persuade the gentle girl to leave the Château, Cadet coolly resolved that she must go, whether she liked it or no. He would banish every woman in New France to the tuque of the St. Maurice had he the power, in order to rid himself and Bigot of the eternal mischief and trouble of them!

Neither Bigot nor Cadet spoke for some minutes after the departure of the dame. They listened to her footsteps as the sound of them died away in the distant rooms, where one door opened after another as she passed on to the secret chamber.

“She is now at the door of Caroline!” thought Bigot, as his imagination followed Dame Tremblay on her errand. “She is now speaking to her. I know Caroline will make no delay to admit us.” Cadet on his side was very quiet and careless of aught save to take the girl and get her safely away before daybreak.

A few moments of heavy silence and expectation passed over them. The howl of a distant watch-dog was heard, and all was again still. The low, monotonous ticking of the great clock at the head of the gallery made the silence still more oppressive. It seemed to be measuring off eternity, not time.

The hour, the circumstance, the brooding stillness, waited for a cry of murder to ring through the Château, waking its sleepers and bidding them come and see the fearful tragedy that lay in the secret chamber.

But no cry came. Fortunately for Bigot it did not! The discovery of Caroline de St. Castin under such circumstances would have closed his career in New France, and ruined him forever in the favor of the Court.

Dame Tremblay returned to her master and Cadet with the information “that the lady was not in her bedchamber, but had gone down, as was her wont, in the still hours of the night, to pray in her oratory in the secret chamber, where she wished never to be disturbed.

“Well, dame,” replied Bigot, “you may retire to your own room. I will go down to the secret chamber myself. These vigils are killing her, poor girl! If your lady should be missing in the morning, remember, dame, that you make no remark of it; she is going away to-night with me and the Sieur Cadet and will return soon again; so be discreet and keep your tongue well between your teeth, which, I am glad to observe,” remarked he with a smile, “are still sound and white as ivory.”

Bigot wished by such flattery to secure her fidelity, and he fully succeeded. The compliment to her teeth was more agreeable than would have been a purse of money. It caught the dame with a hook there was no escape from.

Dame Tremblay courtesied very low, and smiled very broadly to show her really good teeth, of which she was extravagantly vain. She assured the Intendant of her perfect discretion and obedience to all his commands.

“Trust to me, your Excellency,” said she with a profound courtesy. “I never deceived a gentleman yet, except the Sieur Tremblay, and he, good man, was none! When I was the Charming Josephine, and all the gay gallants of the city used to flatter and spoil me, I never deceived one of them, never! I knew that all is vanity in this world, but my eyes and teeth were considered very fine in those days, your Excellency.”

“And are yet, dame. Zounds! Lake Beauport has had nothing to equal them since you retired from business as a beauty. But mind my orders, dame! keep quiet and you will please me. Good-night, dame!”

“Good-night, your Excellency! Good-night, your Honor!” replied she, flushed with gratified vanity. She left Bigot vowing to herself that he was the finest gentleman and the best judge of a woman in New France! The Sieur Cadet she could not like. He never looked pleasant on a woman, as a gentleman ought to do!

The dame left them to themselves, and went off trippingly in high spirits to her own chamber, where she instantly ran to the mirror to look at her teeth, and made faces in the glass like a foolish girl in her teens.

Bigot, out of a feeling of delicacy not usual with him, bid Cadet wait in the anteroom while he went forward to the secret chamber of Caroline. “The sudden presence of a stranger might alarm her,” he said.

He descended the stair and knocked softly at the door, calling in a low tone, “Caroline! Caroline!” No answer came. He wondered at that, for her quick ear used always to catch the first sound of his footsteps while yet afar off.

He knocked louder, and called again her name. Alas! he might have called forever! That voice would never make her heart flutter again or her eyes brighten at his footstep, that sounded sweeter than any music as she waited and watched for him, always ready to meet him at the door.

Bigot anticipated something wrong, and with a hasty hand pushed open the door of the secret chamber and went in. A blaze of light filled his eyes. A white form lay upon the floor. He saw it and he saw nothing else! She lay there with her unclosed eyes looking as the dead only look at the living. One hand was pressed to her bosom, the other was stretched out, holding the broken stem and a few green leaves of the fatal bouquet which La Corriveau had not wholly plucked from her grasp.

Bigot stood for a moment stricken dumb and transfixed with horror, then sprang forward and knelt over her with a cry of agony. He thought she might have fallen in a swoon. He touched her pale forehead, her lips, her hands. He felt her heart, it did not beat; he lifted her head to his bosom, it fell like the flower of a lily broken on its stem, and he knew she was dead. He saw the red streaks of blood on her snowy robe, and he knew she was murdered.

A long cry like the wail of a man in torture burst from him. It woke more than one sleeper in the distant chambers of the Château, making them start upon their pillows to listen for another cry, but none came. Bigot was a man of iron; he retained self-possession enough to recollect the danger of rousing the house.

He smothered his cries in suffocating sobs, but they reached the ear of Cadet, who, foreboding some terrible catastrophe, rushed into the room where the secret door stood open. The light glared up the stair. He ran down and saw the Intendant on his knees, holding in his arms the half raised form of a woman which he kissed and called by name like a man distraught with grief and despair.

Cadet's coarse and immovable nature stood him in good stead at this moment. He saw at a glance what had happened. The girl they had come to bear away was dead! How? He knew not; but the Intendant must not be suffered to make an alarm. There was danger of discovery on all sides now, and the necessity of concealment was a thousand times greater than ever. There was no time to question, but instant help was needed. In amaze at the spectacle before him, Cadet instantly flew to the assistance of the Intendant.

He approached Bigot without speaking a word, although his great eyes expressed a look of sympathy never seen there before. He disengaged the dead form of Caroline tenderly from the embrace of Bigot, and laid it gently upon the floor, and lifting Bigot up in his stout arms, whispered hoarsely in his ear, “Keep still, Bigot! keep still! not one word! make no alarm! This is a dreadful business, but we must go to another room to consider calmly, calmly, mind, what it means and what is to be done.”

“Oh, Cadet! Cadet!” moaned the Intendant, still resting on his shoulder, “she is dead! dead! when I just wanted her to live! I have been hard with women, but if there was one I loved it was she who lies dead before me! Who, who has done this bloody deed to me?”

“Who has done it to her, you mean! You are not killed yet, old friend, but will live to revenge this horrid business!” answered Cadet with rough sympathy.

“I would give my life to restore hers!” replied Bigot despairingly. “Oh, Cadet, you never knew what was in my heart about this girl, and how I had resolved to make her reparation for the evil I had done her!”

“Well, I can guess what was in your heart, Bigot. Come, old friend, you are getting more calm, you can walk now. Let us go upstairs to consider what is to be done about it. Damn the women! They are man's torment whether alive or dead!”

Bigot was too much absorbed in his own tumultuous feelings to notice Cadet's remark. He allowed himself to be led without resistance to another room, out of sight of the murdered girl, in whose presence Cadet knew calm council was impossible.

Cadet seated Bigot on a couch and, sitting beside him, bade him be a man and not a fool. He tried to rouse Bigot by irritating him, thinking, in his coarse way, that that was better than to be maudlin over him, as he considered it, with vain expressions of sympathy.

“I would not give way so,” said he, “for all the women in and out of Paradise! and you are a man, Bigot! Remember you have brought me here, and you have to take me safely back again, out of this den of murder.”

“Yes, Cadet,” replied Bigot, rousing himself up at the sharp tone of his friend. “I must think of your safety; I care little for my own at this moment. Think for me.”

“Well, then, I will think for you, and I think this, Bigot, that if the Governor finds out this assassination, done in your house, and that you and I have been here at this hour of night with the murdered girl, by God! he will say we have alone done it, and the world will believe it! So rouse up, I for one do not want to be taxed with the murder of a woman, and still less to be hung innocently for the death of one. I would not risk my little finger for all the women alive, let alone my neck for a dead one!”

The suggestion was like a sharp probe in his flesh. It touched Bigot to the quick. He started up on his feet. “You are right, Cadet, it only wants that accusation to make me go mad! But my head is not my own yet! I can think of nothing but her lying there, dead in her loveliness and in her love! Tell me what to do, and I will do it.”

“Ay, now you talk reasonably. Now you are coming to yourself, Bigot. We came to remove her alive from here, did we not? We must now remove her dead. She cannot remain where she is at the risk of certain discovery to-morrow.”

“No, the secret chamber would not hide such a secret as that,” replied Bigot, recovering his self-possession. “But how to remove her? We cannot carry her forth without discovery.” Bigot's practical intellect was waking up to the danger of leaving the murdered girl in the Château.

Cadet rose and paced the room with rapid strides, rubbing his forehead, and twitching his mustache violently. “I will tell you what we have got to do, Bigot! Par Dieu! we must bury her where she is, down there in the vaulted chamber.”

“What, bury her?” Bigot looked at him with intense surprise.

“Yes, we must bury her in that very chamber, Bigot. We must cover up somebody's damnable work to avert suspicion from ourselves! A pretty task for you and me, Bigot! Par Dieu! I could laugh like a horse, if I were not afraid of being overheard.”

“But who is to dig a grave for her? surely not you or I,” replied Bigot with a look of dismay.

“Yes, gentlemen as we are, you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here and ought to know.”

“I, how should I know? It is terrible, Cadet, to bury her as if we had murdered her! Is there no other way?”

“None. We are in a cahot and must get our cariole out of it as best we can! I see plainly we two shall be taxed with this murder, Bigot, if we let it be discovered! Besides, utter ruin awaits you from La Pompadour if she finds out you ever had this girl at Beaumanoir in keeping. Come! time for parley is past; where shall we find spades? We must to work, Bigot!”

A sudden thought lighted up the eyes of the Intendant, who saw the force of Cadet's suggestion, strange and repulsive as it was. “I think I know,” said he; “the gardeners keep their tools in the old tower, and we can get there by the secret passage and return.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Cadet, encouragingly, “come, show the way, and we will get the tools in a trice! I always heard there was a private way underground to the old tower. It never stood its master in better stead than now; perhaps never worse if it has let in the murderer of this poor girl of yours.”

Bigot rose up, very faint and weak; Cadet took his arm to support him, and bidding him be firm and not give way again at sight of her dead body, led him back to the chamber of death. “Let us first look around a moment,” said he, “to find, if possible, some trace of the hellish assassins.”

The lamps burned brightly, shedding a glare of light over every object in the secret chamber.

Cadet looked narrowly round, but found little trace of the murderers. The drawers of the escritoire stood open, with their contents in great disorder, a circumstance which at once suggested robbers. Cadet pointed it out to Bigot with the question:

“Kept she much money, Bigot?”

“None that I know of. She asked for none, poor girl! I gave her none, though I would have given her the King's treasury had she wished for it.”

“But she might have had money when she came, Bigot,” continued Cadet, not doubting but robbery had been the motive for the murder.

“It may be, I never questioned her,” replied Bigot; “she never spoke of money; alas! all the money in the world was as dross in her estimation. Other things than money occupied her pure thoughts.”

“Well, it looks like robbers: they have ransacked the drawers and carried off all she had, were it much or little,” remarked Cadet, still continuing his search.

“But why kill her? Oh, Cadet, why kill the gentle girl, who would have given every jewel in her possession for the bare asking?”

“Nay, I cannot guess,” said Cadet. “It looks like robbers, but the mystery is beyond my wit to explain. What are you doing, Bigot?”

Bigot had knelt down by the side of Caroline; he lifted her hand first to his lips, then towards Cadet, to show him the stalk of a rose from which the flower had been broken, and which she held with a grip so hard that it could not be loosened from her dead fingers.

The two men looked long and earnestly at it, but failed to make a conjecture even why the flower had been plucked from that broken stalk and carried away, for it was not to be seen in the room.

The fragment of a letter lay under a chair. It was a part of that which La Corriveau had torn up and missed to gather up again with the rest. Cadet picked it up and thrust it into his pocket.

The blood streaks upon her white robe and the visible stabs of a fine poniard riveted their attention. That that was the cause of her death they doubted not, but the mute eloquence of her wounds spoke only to the heat. It gave no explanation to the intellect. The whole tragedy seemed wrapped in inexplicable mystery.

“They have covered their track up well!” remarked Cadet. “Hey! but what have we here?” Bigot started up at the exclamation. The door of the secret passage stood open. La Corriveau had not closed it after her when making her escape. “Here is where the assassins have found entrance and exit! Egad! More people know the secret of your Château than you think, Bigot!”

They sprang forward, and each seizing a lamp, the two men rushed into the narrow passage. It was dark and still as the catacombs. No trace of anything to the purpose could they perceive in the vaulted subterranean way to the turret.

They speedily came to the other end; the secret door there stood open also. They ascended the stairs in the tower, but could see no trace of the murderers. “It is useless to search further for them at this time,” remarked Cadet, “perhaps not safe at any time, but I would give my best horse to lay hands on the assassins at this moment.”

Gardeners' tools lay around the room. “Here,” exclaimed Cadet, “is what is equally germane to the matter, and we have no time to lose.”

He seized a couple of spades and a bar of iron, and bidding Bigot go before him with the lights, they returned to the chamber of death.

“Now for work! This sad business must be done well, and done quickly!” exclaimed Cadet. “You shall see that I have not forgotten how to dig, Bigot!”

Cadet threw off his coat, and setting to work, pulled up the thick carpet from one side of the chamber. The floor was covered with broad, smooth flags, one of which he attacked with the iron bar, raised the flagstone and turned it over; another easily followed, and very soon a space in the dry brown earth was exposed, large enough to make a grave.

Bigot looked at him in a sort of dream. “I cannot do it, Cadet! I cannot dig her grave!” and he threw down the spade which he had taken feebly in his hand.

“No matter, Bigot! I will do it! Indeed, you would only be in my way. Sit down while I dig, old friend. Par Dieu! this is nice work for the Commissary General of New France, with the Royal Intendant overseeing him!”

Bigot sat down and looked forlornly on while Cadet with the arms of a Hercules dug and dug, throwing out the earth without stopping for the space of a quarter of an hour, until he had made a grave large and deep enough to contain the body of the hapless girl.

“That will do!” cried he, leaping out of the pit. “Our funeral arrangements must be of the briefest, Bigot! So come help me to shroud this poor girl.”

Cadet found a sheet of linen and some fine blankets upon a couch in the secret chamber. He spread them out upon the floor, and motioned to Bigot without speaking. The two men lifted Caroline tenderly and reverently upon the sheet. They gazed at her for a minute in solemn silence, before shrouding her fair face and slender form in their last winding-sheet. Bigot was overpowered with his feelings, yet strove to master them, as he gulped down the rising in his throat which at times almost strangled him.

Cadet, eager to get his painful task over, took from the slender finger of Caroline a ring, a love-gift of Bigot, and from her neck a golden locket containing his portrait and a lock of his hair. A rosary hung at her waist; this Cadet also detached, as a precious relic to be given to the Intendant by and by. There was one thread of silk woven into the coarse hempen nature of Cadet.

Bigot stooped down and gave her pale lips and eyes, which he had tenderly closed, a last despairing kiss, before veiling her face with the winding-sheet as she lay, white as a snow-drift, and as cold. They wrapped her softly in the blankets, and without a word spoken, lowered the still, lissom body into its rude grave.

The awful silence was only broken by the spasmodic sobs of Bigot as he leaned over the grave to look his last upon the form of the fair girl whom he had betrayed and brought to this untimely end. “Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!” said he, beating his breast. “Oh, Cadet, we are burying her like a dog! I cannot, I cannot do it!”

The Intendant's feelings overcame him again, and he rushed from the chamber, while Cadet, glad of his absence for a few moments, hastily filled up the grave and, replacing with much care the stone slabs over it, swept the debris into the passage and spread the carpet again smoothly over the floor. Every trace of the dreadful deed was obliterated in the chamber of murder.

Cadet, acutely thinking of everything at this supreme moment, would leave no ground of suspicion for Dame Tremblay when she came in the morning to visit the chamber. She should think that her lady had gone away with her master as mysteriously as she had come, and no further inquiry would be made after her. In this Cadet was right.

It was necessary for Cadet and Bigot now to depart by the secret passage to the tower. The deep-toned bell of the château struck three.

“We must now be gone, Bigot, and instantly,” exclaimed Cadet. “Our night work is done! Let us see what day will bring forth! You must see to it to-morrow, Bigot, that no man or woman alive ever again enter this accursed chamber of death!”

Cadet fastened the secret door of the stair, and gathering up his spades and bar of iron, left the chamber with Bigot, who was passive as a child in his hands. The Intendant turned round and gave one last sorrowful look at the now darkened room as they left it. Cadet and he made their way back to the tower. They sallied out into the open air, which blew fresh and reviving upon their fevered faces after escaping from the stifling atmosphere below.

They proceeded at once towards their horses and mounted them, but Bigot felt deadly faint and halted under a tree while Cadet rode back to the porter's lodge and roused up old Marcele to give him some brandy, if he had any, “as of course he had,” said Cadet. Brandy was a gate-porter's inside livery, the lining of his laced coat which he always wore. Cadet assumed a levity which he did not really feel.

Marcele fortunately could oblige the Sieur Cadet. “He did line his livery a little, but lightly, as his Honor would see!” said he, bringing out a bottle of cognac and a drinking-cup.

“It is to keep us from catching cold!” continued Cadet in his peculiar way. “Is it good?” He placed the bottle to his lips and tasted it.

Marcele assured him it was good as gold.

“Right!” said Cadet, throwing Marcele a louis d'or. “I will take the bottle to the Intendant to keep him from catching cold too! Mind, Marcele, you keep your tongue still, or else--!” Cadet held up his whip, and bidding the porter “good-night!” rejoined Bigot.

Cadet had a crafty design in this proceeding. He wanted not to tell Marcele that a lady was accompanying them; also not to let him perceive that they left Beaumanoir without one. He feared that the old porter and Dame Tremblay might possibly compare notes together, and the housekeeper discover that Caroline had not left Beaumanoir with the Intendant.

Bigot sat faint and listless in his saddle when Cadet poured out a large cupful of brandy and offered it to him. He drank it eagerly. Cadet then filled and gulped down a large cupful himself, then gave another to the Intendant, and poured another and another for himself until, he said, he “began to feel warm and comfortable, and got the damnable taste of grave-digging out of his mouth!”

The heavy draught which Cadet forced the Intendant to take relieved him somewhat, but he groaned inwardly and would not speak. Cadet respected his mood, only bidding him ride fast. They spurred their horses, and rode swiftly, unobserved by any one, until they entered the gates of the Palace of the Intendant.

The arrival of the Intendant or the Sieur Cadet at the Palace at any untimely hour of the night excited no remark whatever, for it was the rule, rather than the exception with them both.

Dame Tremblay was not surprised next morning to find the chamber empty and the lady gone.

She shook her head sadly. “He is a wild gallant, is my master! No wilder ever came to Lake Beauport when I was the Charming Josephine and all the world ran after me. But I can keep a secret, and I will! This secret I must keep at any rate, by the Intendant's order, and I would rather die than be railed at by that fierce Sieur Cadet! I will keep the Intendant's secret safe as my teeth, which he praised so handsomely and so justly!”

The fact that Caroline never returned to the Château, and that the search for her was so long and so vainly carried on by La Corne St. Luc and the Baron de St. Castin, caused the dame to suspect at last that some foul play had been perpetrated, but she dared not speak openly.

The old woman's suspicions grew with age into certainties, when at last she chanced to talk with her old fellow servant, Marcele, the gatekeeper, and learned from him that Bigot and Cadet had left the Château alone on that fatal night. Dame Tremblay was more perplexed than ever. She talked, she knew not what, but her talk passed into the traditions of the habitans.

It became the popular belief that a beautiful woman, the mistress of the powerful Intendant Bigot, had been murdered and buried in the Château of Beaumanoir.

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XLIII. SILK GLOVES OVER BLOODY HANDS

It was long before Angélique came to herself from the swoon in which she had been left lying on the floor by La Corriveau. Fortunately for her it was without discovery. None of the servants happened to come to her room during its continuance, else a weakness so strange to her usual hardihood would have become the city's talk before night, and set all its idle tongues conjecturing or inventing a reason for it. It would have reached the ears of Bigot, as every spray of gossip did, and set him thinking, too, more savagely than he was yet doing, as to the causes and occasions of the murder of Caroline.

All the way back to the Palace, Bigot had scarcely spoken a word to Cadet. His mind was in a tumult of the wildest conjectures, and his thoughts ran to and fro like hounds in a thick brake darting in every direction to find the scent of the game they were in search of. When they reached the Palace, Bigot, without speaking to any one, passed through the anterooms to his own apartment, and threw himself, dressed and booted as he was, upon a couch, where he lay like a man stricken down by a mace from some unseen hand.

Cadet had coarser ways of relieving himself from the late unusual strain upon his rough feelings. He went down to the billiard-room, and joining recklessly in the game that was still kept up by De Pean, Le Gardeur, and a number of wild associates, strove to drown all recollections of the past night at Beaumanoir by drinking and gambling with more than usual violence until far on in the day.

Bigot neither slept nor wished to sleep. The image of the murdered girl lying in her rude grave was ever before him, with a vividness so terrible that it seemed he could never sleep again. His thoughts ran round and round like a mill-wheel, without advancing a step towards a solution of the mystery of her death.

He summoned up his recollections of every man and woman he knew in the Colony, and asked himself regarding each one, the question, “Is it he who has done this? Is it she who has prompted it? And who could have had a motive, and who not, to perpetrate such a bloody deed?”

One image came again and again before his mind's eye as he reviewed the list of his friends and enemies. The figure of Angélique appeared and reappeared, intruding itself between every third or fourth personage which his memory called up, until his thoughts fixed upon her with the maddening inquiry, “Could Angélique des Meloises have been guilty of this terrible deed?”

He remembered her passionate denunciation of the lady of Beaumanoir, her fierce demand for her banishment by a lettre de cachet. He knew her ambition and recklessness, but still, versed as he was in all the ways of wickedness, and knowing the inexorable bitterness of envy, and the cruelty of jealousy in the female breast,--at least in such women as he had for the most part had experience of,--Bigot could hardly admit the thought that one so fair as Angélique, one who held him in a golden net of fascination, and to whom he had been more than once on the point of yielding, could have committed so great a crime.

He struggled with his thoughts like a man amid tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon, but could find none. Still, in spite of himself, in spite of his violent asseverations that “it was IMPOSSIBLE;” in spite of Cadet's plausible theory of robbers,--which Bigot at first seized upon as the likeliest explanation of the mystery,--the thought of Angélique ever returned back upon him like a fresh accusation.

He could not accuse her yet, though something told him he might have to do so at last. He grew angry at the ever-recurring thought of her, and turning his face to the wall, like a man trying to shut out the light, resolved to force disbelief in her guilt until clearer testimony than his own suspicions should convict her of the death of Caroline. And yet in his secret soul he dreaded a discovery that might turn out as he feared. But he pushed the black thoughts aside; he would wait and watch for what he feared to find.

The fact of Caroline's concealment at Beaumanoir, and her murder at the very moment when the search was about to be made for her, placed Bigot in the cruelest dilemma. Whatever his suspicions might be, he dared not, by word or sign, avow any knowledge of Caroline's presence, still less of her mysterious murder, in his Château. Her grave had been dug; she had been secretly buried out of human sight, and he was under bonds as for his very life never to let the dreadful mystery be discovered.

So Bigot lay on his couch, for once a weak and frightened man, registering vain vows of vengeance against persons unknown, vows which he knew at the moment were empty as bubbles, because he dared not move hand or foot in the matter to carry them out, or make open accusation against any one of the foul crime. What thoughts came to Bigot's subtle mind were best known to himself, but something was suggested by the mocking devil who was never far from him, and he caught and held fast the wicked suggestion with a bitter laugh. He then grew suddenly still and said to himself, “I will sleep on it!” and pillowing his head quietly, not in sleep, but in thoughts deeper than sleep, he lay till day.

Angélique, who had never in her life swooned before, felt, when she awoke, like one returning to life from death. She opened her eyes wondering where she was, and half remembering the things she had heard as things she had seen, looked anxiously around the room for La Corriveau. She rose up with a start when she saw she was gone, for Angélique recollected suddenly that La Corriveau now held the terrible secret which concerned her life and peace for evermore.

The thing she had so long wished for, and prayed for, was at last done! Her rival was out of the way! But she also felt that if the murder was discovered her own life was forfeit to the law, and the secret was in the keeping of the vilest of women.

A mountain, not of remorse, but of apprehension, overwhelmed her for a time. But Angélique's mind was too intensely selfish, hard, and superficial, to give way to the remorse of a deeper nature.

She was angry at her own cowardice, but she feared the suspicions of Bigot. There was ever something in his dark nature which she could not fathom, and deep and crafty as she knew herself to be, she feared that he was more deep and more crafty than herself.

What if he should discover her hand in this bloody business? The thought drove her frantic, until she fancied she repented of the deed.

Had it brought a certainty, this crime, then--why, then--she had found a compensation for the risk she was running, for the pain she was enduring, which she tried to believe was regret and pity for her victim. Her anxiety redoubled when it occurred to her that Bigot, remembering her passionate appeals to him for the removal of Caroline, might suspect her of the murder as the one alone having a palpable interest in it.

“But Bigot shall never believe it even if he suspect it!” exclaimed she at last, shaking off her fears. “I have made fools of many men for my pleasure, I can surely blind one for my safety; and, after all, whose fault is it but Bigot's? He would not grant me the lettre de cachet nor keep his promise for her removal. He even gave me her life! But he lied; he did not mean it. He loved her too well, and meant to deceive me and marry her, and I have deceived him and shall marry him, that is all!” and Angélique laughed a hysterical laugh, such as Dives in his torments may sometimes give way to.

“La Corriveau has betrayed her trust in one terrible point,” continued she, “she promised a death so easy that all men would say the lady of Beaumanoir died of heartbreak only, or by God's visitation! A natural death! The foul witch has used her stiletto and made a murder of that which, without it, had been none! Bigot will know it, must know it even if he dare not reveal it! for how in the name of all the saints is it to be concealed?

“But, my God! this will never do!” continued she, starting up, “I look like very guilt!” She stared fiercely in the mirror at her hollow eyes, pale cheeks, and white lips. She scarcely recognized herself. Her bloom and brightness had vanished for the time.

“What if I have inhaled some of the poisoned odor of those cursed roses?” thought she, shuddering at the supposition; but she reassured herself that it could not be. “Still, my looks condemn me! The pale face of that dead girl is looking at me out of mine! Bigot, if he sees me, will not fail to read the secret in my looks.”

She glanced at the clock: the morning was far advanced towards noon; visitors might soon arrive, Bigot himself might come, she dare not deny herself to him. She would deny herself to no one to-day! She would go everywhere and see everybody, and show the world, if talk of it should arise, that she was wholly innocent of that girl's blood.

She would wear her brightest looks, her gayest robe, her hat and feathers, the newest from Paris. She would ride out into the city,--go to the Cathedral,--show herself to all her friends, and make every one say or think that Angélique des Meloises had not a care or trouble in the world.

She rang for Fanchon, impatient to commence her toilet, for when dressed she knew that she would feel like herself once more, cool and defiant. The touch of her armor of fashionable attire would restore her confidence in herself, and enable her to brave down any suspicion in the mind of the Intendant,--at any rate it was her only resource, and Angélique was not one to give up even a lost battle, let alone one half gained through the death of her rival.

Fanchon came in haste at the summons of her mistress. She had long waited to hear the bell, and began to fear she was sick or in one of those wild moods which had come over her occasionally since the night of her last interview with Le Gardeur.

The girl started at sight of the pale face and paler lips of her mistress. She uttered an exclamation of surprise, but Angélique, anticipating all questions, told her she was unwell, but would dress and take a ride out in the fresh air and sunshine to recruit.

“But had you not better see the physician, my Lady?--you do look so pale to-day, you are really not well!”

“No, but I will ride out;” and she added in her old way, “perhaps, Fanchon, I may meet some one who will be better company than the physician. Qui sait?” And she laughed with an appearance of gaiety which she was far from feeling, and which only half imposed on the quick-witted maid who waited upon her.

“Where is your aunt, Fanchon? When did you see Dame Dodier?” asked she, really anxious to learn what had become of La Corriveau.

“She returned home this morning, my Lady! I had not seen her for days before, but supposed she had already gone back to St. Valier,--but Aunt Dodier is a strange woman, and tells no one her business.”

“She has, perhaps, other lost jewels to look after besides mine,” replied Angélique mechanically, yet feeling easier upon learning the departure of La Corriveau.

“Perhaps so, my Lady. I am glad she is gone home. I shall never wish to see her again.”

“Why?” asked Angélique, sharply, wondering if Fanchon had conjectured anything of her aunt's business.

“They say she has dealings with that horrid Mère Malheur, and I believe it,” replied Fanchon, with a shrug of disgust.

“Ah! do you think Mère Malheur knows her business or any of your aunt's secrets, Fanchon?” asked Angélique, thoroughly roused.

“I think she does, my Lady,--you cannot live in a chimney with another without both getting black alike, and Mère Malheur is a black witch as sure as my aunt is a white one,” was Fanchon's reply.

“What said your aunt on leaving?” asked her mistress.

“I did not see her leave, my Lady; I only learned from Ambroise Gariepy that she had crossed the river this morning to return to St. Valier.”

“And who is Ambroise Gariepy, Fanchon? You have a wide circle of acquaintance for a young girl, I think!” Angélique knew the dangers of gossiping too well not to fear Fanchon's imprudences.

“Yes, my Lady,” replied Fanchon with affected simplicity, “Ambroise Gariepy keeps the Lion Vert and the ferry upon the south shore; he brings me news and sometimes a little present from the pack of the Basque pedlers,--he brought me this comb, my Lady!” Fanchon turned her head to show her mistress a superb comb in her thick black hair, and in her delight of talking of Ambroise Gariepy, the little inn of the ferry, and the cross that leaned like a failing memory over the grave of his former wife, Fanchon quite forgot to ease her mind further on the subject of La Corriveau, nor did Angélique resume the dangerous topic.

Fanchon's easy, shallow way of talking of her lover touched a sympathetic chord in the breast of her mistress. Grand passions were grand follies in Angélique's estimation, which she was less capable of appreciating than even her maid; but flirtation and coquetry, skin-deep only, she could understand, and relished beyond all other enjoyments. It was just now like medicine to her racking thoughts to listen to Fanchon's shallow gossip.

She had done what she had done, she reflected, and it could not be undone! why should she give way to regret, and lose the prize for which she had staked so heavily? She would not do it! No, par Dieu! She had thrown Le Gardeur to the fishes for the sake of the Intendant, and had done that other deed! She shied off from the thought of it as from an uncouth thing in the dark, and began to feel shame of her weakness at having fainted at the tale of La Corriveau.

The light talk of Fanchon while dressing the long golden hair of her mistress and assisting her to put on a new riding-dress and the plumed hat fresh from Paris, which she had not yet displayed in public, did much to restore her equanimity.

Her face had, however, not recovered from its strange pallor. Her eager maid, anxious for the looks of her mistress, insisted on a little rouge, which Angélique's natural bloom had never before needed. She submitted, for she intended to look her best to-day, she said. “Who knows whom I shall fall in with?”

“That is right, my Lady,” exclaimed Fanchon admiringly, “no one could be dressed perfectly as you are and be sick! I pity the gentleman you meet to-day, that is all! There is murder in your eye, my Lady!”

Poor Fanchon believed she was only complimenting her mistress, and at other times her remark would only have called forth a joyous laugh; now the word seemed like a sharp knife: it cut, and Angélique did not laugh. She pushed her maid forcibly away from her, and was on the point of breaking out into some violent exclamation when, recalled by the amazed look of Fanchon, she turned the subject adroitly, and asked, “Where is my brother?”

“Gone with the Chevalier de Pean to the Palace, my Lady!” replied Fanchon, trembling all over, and wondering how she had angered her mistress.

“How know you that, Fanchon?” asked Angélique, recovering her usual careless tone.

“I overheard them speaking together, my Lady. The Chevalier de Pean said that the Intendant was sick, and would see no one this morning.”

“Yes, what then?” Angélique was struck with a sudden consciousness of danger in the wind. “Are you sure they said the Intendant was sick?” asked she.

“Yes, my Lady! and the Chevalier de Pean said that he was less sick than mad, and out of humor to a degree he had never seen him before!”

“Did they give a reason for it? that is, for the Intendant's sickness or madness?” Angélique's eyes were fixed keenly upon her maid, to draw out a full confession.

“None, my Lady, only the Chevalier des Meloises said he supposed it was the news from France which sat so ill on his stomach.”

“And what then, Fanchon? you are so long of answering!” Angélique stamped her foot with impatience.

Fanchon looked up at the reproof so little merited, and replied quickly, “The Chevalier de Pean said it must be that, for he knew of nothing else. The gentlemen then went out and I heard no more.”

Angélique was relieved by this turn of conversation. She felt certain that if Bigot discovered the murder he would not fail to reveal it to the Chevalier de Pean, who was understood to be the depository of all his secrets. She began to cheer up under the belief that Bigot would never dare accuse any one of a deed which would be the means of proclaiming his own falseness and duplicity towards the King and the Marquise de Pompadour.

“I have only to deny all knowledge of it,” said she to herself, “swear to it if need be, and Bigot will not dare to go farther in the matter. Then will come my time to turn the tables upon him in a way he little expects! Pshaw!” continued she, glancing at her gay hat in the mirror, and with her own dainty fingers setting the feather more airily to her liking. “Bigot is bound fast enough to me now that she is gone! and when he discovers that I hold his secret he will not dare meddle with mine.”

Angélique, measurably reassured and hopeful of success in her desperate venture, descended the steps of her mansion, and, gathering up her robes daintily, mounted her horse, which had long been chafing in the hands of her groom waiting for his mistress.

She bade the man remain at home until her return, and dashed off down the Rue St. Louis, drawing after her a hundred eyes of admiration and envy.

She would ride down to the Place d'Armes, she thought, where she knew that before she had skirted the length of the Castle wall half a dozen gallants would greet her with offers of escort, and drop any business they had in hand for the sake of a gallop by her side.

She had scarcely passed the Monastery of the Recollets when she was espied by the Sieur La Force, who, too, was as quickly discovered by her, as he loitered at the corner of the Rue St. Ann, to catch sight of any fair piece of mischief that might be abroad that day from her classes in the Convent of the Ursulines.

“Angélique is as fair a prize as any of them,” thought La Force, as he saluted her with Parisian politeness, and with a request to be her escort in her ride through the city.

“My horse is at hand, and I shall esteem it such an honor,” said La Force, smiling, “and such a profit too,” added he; “my credit is low in a certain quarter, you know where!” and he laughingly pointed towards the Convent. “I desire to make HER jealous, for she has made me madly so, and no one can aid in an enterprise of that kind better than yourself, Mademoiselle des Meloises!”

“Or more willingly, Sieur La Force!” replied she, laughing. “But you overrate my powers, I fear.”

“Oh, by no means,” replied La Force; “there is not a lady in Quebec but feels in her heart that Angélique des Meloises can steal away her lover when and where she will. She has only to look at him across the street, and presto, change! he is gone from her as if by magic. But will you really help me, Mademoiselle?”

“Most willingly, Sieur La Force,--for your profit if not for your honor! I am just in the humor for tormenting somebody this morning; so get your horse and let us be off!”

Before La Force had mounted his horse, a number of gaily-dressed young ladies came in sight, in full sail down the Rue St. Ann, like a fleet of rakish little yachts, bearing down upon Angélique and her companion.

“Shall we wait for them, La Force?” asked she. “They are from the Convent!”

“Yes, and SHE is there too! The news will be all over the city in an hour that I am riding with you!” exclaimed La Force in a tone of intense satisfaction.

Five girls just verging on womanhood, perfect in manner and appearance--as the Ursulines knew well how to train the young olive-plants of the Colony,--walked on demurely enough, looking apparently straight forward, but casting side glances from under their veils which raked the Sieur La Force and Angélique with a searching fire that nothing could withstand, La Force said; but which Angélique remarked was simply “impudence, such as could only be found in Convent girls!”

They came nearer. Angélique might have supposed they were going to pass by them had she not known too well their sly ways. The foremost of the five, Louise Roy, whose glorious hair was the boast of the city, suddenly threw back her veil, and disclosing a charming face, dimpled with smiles and with a thousand mischiefs lurking in her bright gray eyes, sprang towards Angélique, while her companions--all Louises of the famous class of that name--also threw up their veils, and stood saluting Angélique and La Force with infinite merriment.

Louise Roy, quizzing La Force through a coquettish eyeglass which she wore on a ribbon round her pretty neck, as if she had never seen him before, motioned to him in a queenly way as she raised her dainty foot, giving him a severe look, or what tried to be such but was in truth an absurd failure.

He instantly comprehended her command, for such it was, and held out his hand, upon which she stepped lightly, and sprang up to Angélique, embracing and kissing her with such cordiality that, if it were not real, the acting was perfect. At the same time Louise Roy made her understand that she was not the only one who could avail herself of the gallant attentions of the Sieur La Force.

In truth Louise Roy was somewhat piqued at the Sieur La Force, and to punish him made herself as heavy as her slight figure would admit of. She stood perched up as long as she could, and actually enjoyed the tremor which she felt plainly enough in his hand as he continued to support her, and was quite disposed to test how long he could or would hold her up, while she conversed in whispers with Angélique.

“Angélique!” said she. “They say in the Convent that you are to marry the Intendant. Your old mistress, Mère St. Louis, is crazy with delight. She says she always predicted you would make a great match.”

“Or none at all, as Mère St. Helene used to say of me; but they know everything in the Convent, do they not?” Angélique pinched the arm of Louise, as much as to say, “Of course it is true.” “But who told you that, Louise?” asked she.

“Oh, every bird that flies! But tell me one thing more. They say the Intendant is a Bluebeard, who has had wives without number,--nobody knows how many or what became of them, so of course he kills them. Is that true?”

Angélique shrank a little, and little as it was the movement was noticed by Louise. “If nobody knows what became of them, how should I know, Louise?” replied she. “He does not look like a Bluebeard, does he?”

“So says Mère St. Joseph, who came from the Convent at Bordeaux, you know, for she never tires telling us. She declares that the Chevalier Bigot was never married at all, and she ought to know that surely, as well as she knows her beads, for coming from the same city as the Intendant, and knowing his family as she does--”

“Well, Louise,” interrupted Angélique impatiently, “but do you not see the Sieur La Force is getting tired of holding you up so long with his hand? For heaven's sake, get down!”

“I want to punish him for going with you, and not waiting for me,” was the cool whisper of Louise. “But you will ask me, Angélique, to the wedding, will you not? If you do not,” continued she, “I shall die!” and delaying her descent as long as possible, she commenced a new topic concerning the hat worn by Angélique.

“Mischief that you are, get down! The Sieur La Force is my cavalier for the day, and you shall not impose on his gallantry that way! He is ready to drop,” whispered Angélique.

“One word more, Angélique.” Louise was delighted to feel the hand of La Force tremble more and more under her foot.

“No, not a word! Get down!”

“Kiss me then, and good-by, cross thing that you are! Do not keep him all day, or all the class besides myself will be jealous,” replied Louise, not offering to get down.

Angélique had no mind to allow her cavalier to be made a horse-block of for anybody but herself. She jerked the bridle, and making her horse suddenly pirouette, compelled Louise to jump down. The mischievous little fairy turned her bright laughing eyes full upon La Force and thanked him for his great courtesy, and with a significant gesture--as much as to say he was at liberty now to escort Angélique, having done penance for the same--rejoined her expectant companions, who had laughed heartily at her manoeuvre.

“She paints!” was Louise's emphatic whisper to her companions, loud enough to be heard by La Force, for whom the remark was partly intended. “She paints! and I saw in her eyes that she has not slept all night! She is in love! and I do believe it is true she is to marry the Intendant!”

This was delicious news to the class of Louises, who laughed out like a chime of silver bells as they mischievously bade La Force and Angélique bon voyage, and passed down the Place d'Armes in search of fresh adventures to fill their budgets of fun--budgets which, on their return to the Convent, they would open under the very noses of the good nuns (who were not so blind as they seemed, however), and regale all their companions with a spicy treat, in response to the universal question ever put to all who had been out in the city, “What is the news?”

La Force, compliant as wax to every caprice of Angélique, was secretly fuming at the trick played upon him by the Mischief of the Convent,--as he called Louise Roy,--for which he resolved to be revenged, even if he had to marry her. He and Angélique rode down the busy streets, receiving salutations on every hand. In the great square of the market-place Angélique pulled up in front of the Cathedral.

Why she stopped there would have puzzled herself to explain. It was not to worship, not to repent of her heinous sin: she neither repented nor desired to repent. But it seemed pleasant to play at repentance and put on imaginary sackcloth.

Angélique's brief contact with the fresh, sunny nature of Louise Roy had sensibly raised her spirits. It lifted the cloud from her brow, and made her feel more like her former self. The story, told half in jest by Louise, that she was to marry the Intendant, flattered her vanity and raised her hopes to the utmost. She liked the city to talk of her in connection with the Intendant.

The image of Beaumanoir grew fainter and fainter as she knelt down upon the floor, not to ask pardon for her sin, but to pray for immunity for herself and the speedy realization of the great object of her ambition and her crime!

The pealing of the organ, rising and falling in waves of harmony, the chanting of choristers, and the voice of the celebrant during the service in honor of St. Michael and all the angels, touched her sensuous nature, but failed to touch her conscience.

A crowd of worshippers were kneeling upon the floor of the Cathedral, unobstructed in those days by seats and pews, except on one side, where rose the stately bancs of the Governor and the Intendant, on either side of which stood a sentry with ported arms, and overhead upon the wall blazed the royal escutcheons of France.

Angélique, whose eyes roved incessantly about the church, turned them often towards the gorgeous banc of the Intendant, and the thought intruded itself to the exclusion of her prayers, “When shall I sit there, with all these proud ladies forgetting their devotions through envy of my good fortune?”

Bigot did not appear in his place at church to-day. He was too profoundly agitated and sick, and lay on his bed till evening, revolving in his astute mind schemes of vengeance possible and impossible, to be carried out should his suspicions of Angélique become certainties of knowledge and fact. His own safety was at stake. The thought that he had been outwitted by the beautiful, designing, heartless girl, the reflection that he dare not turn to the right hand nor to the left to inquire into this horrid assassination, which, if discovered, would be laid wholly to his own charge, drove him to the verge of distraction.

The Governor and his friend Peter Kalm occupied the royal banc. Lutheran as he was, Peter Kalm was too philosophical and perhaps too faithful a follower of Christ to consider religion as a matter of mere opinion or of form rather than of humble dependence upon God, the Father of all, with faith in Christ and the conscientious striving to love God and his neighbor.

A short distance from Angélique, two ladies in long black robes, and evidently of rank, were kneeling with downcast faces, and hands clasped over their bosoms, in a devout attitude of prayer and supplication.

Angélique's keen eye, which nothing escaped, needed not a second glance to recognize the unmistakable grace of Amélie de Repentigny and the nobility of the Lady de Tilly.

She started at sight of these relatives of Le Gardeur's, but did not wonder at their presence, for she already knew that they had returned to the city immediately after the abduction of Le Gardeur by the Chevalier de Pean.

Startled, frightened, and despairing, with aching hearts but unimpaired love, Amélie and the Lady de Tilly had followed Le Gardeur and reoccupied their stately house in the city, resolved to leave no means untried, no friends unsolicited, no prayers unuttered to rescue him from the gulf of perdition into which he had again so madly plunged.

Within an hour after her return, Amélie, accompanied by Pierre Philibert, had gone to the Palace to seek an interview with her brother. They were rudely denied. “He was playing a game of piquet for the championship of the Palace with the Chevalier de Pean, and could not come if St. Peter, let alone Pierre Philibert, stood at the gate knocking!”

This reply had passed through the impure lips of the Sieur de Lantagnac before it reached Amélie and Pierre. They did not believe it came from their brother. They left the Palace with heavy hearts, after long and vainly seeking an interview, Philibert resolving to appeal to the Intendant himself and call him to account at the sword's point, if need be, for the evident plot in the Palace to detain Le Gardeur from his friends.

Amélie, dreading some such resolution on the part of Pierre, went back next day alone to the Palace to try once more to see Le Gardeur.

She was agitated and in tears at the fate of her brother. She was anxious over the evident danger which Pierre seemed to court, for his sake and--she would not hide the truth from herself--for her own sake too; and yet she would not forbid him. She felt her own noble blood stirred within her to the point that she wished herself a man to be able to walk sword in hand into the Palace and confront the herd of revellers who she believed had plotted the ruin of her brother.

She was proud of Pierre, while she trembled at the resolution which she read in his countenance of demanding as a soldier, and not as a suppliant, the restoration of Le Gardeur to his family.

Amélie's second visit to the Palace had been as fruitless as her first. She was denied admittance, with the profoundest regrets on the part of De Pean, who met her at the door and strove to exculpate himself from the accusation of having persuaded Le Gardeur to depart from Tilly, and of keeping him in the Palace against the prayers of his friends.

De Pean remembered his presumption as well as his rejection by Amélie at Tilly, and while his tongue ran smooth as oil in polite regrets that Le Gardeur had resolved not to see his sister to-day, her evident distress filled him with joy, which he rolled under his tongue as the most delicate morsel of revenge he had ever tasted.

Bowing with well-affected politeness, De Pean attended her to her carriage, and having seen her depart in tears, returned laughing into the Palace, remarking, as he mimicked the weeping countenance of Amélie, that “the Honnêtes Gens had learned it was a serious matter to come to the burial of the virtues of a young gentleman like Le Gardeur de Repentigny.”

On her return home Amélie threw herself on the neck of her aunt, repeating in broken accents, “My poor Le Gardeur! my brother! He refuses to see me, aunt! He is lost and ruined in that den of all iniquity and falsehood!”

“Be composed, Amélie,” replied the Lady de Tilly; “I know it is hard to bear, but perhaps Le Gardeur did not send that message to you. The men about him are capable of deceiving you to an extent you have no conception of,--you who know so little of the world's baseness.”

“O aunt, it is true! He sent me this dreadful thing; I took it, for it bears the handwriting of my brother.”

She held in her hand a card, one of a pack. It was the death-card of superstitious lookers into futurity. Had he selected it because it bore that reputation, or was it by chance?

On the back of it he had written, or scrawled in a trembling hand, yet plainly, the words: “Return home, Amélie. I will not see you. I have lost the game of life and won the card you see. Return home, dear sister, and forget your unworthy and ruined brother, Le Gardeur.”

Lady de Tilly took the card, and read and re-read it, trying to find a meaning it did not contain, and trying not to find the sad meaning it did contain.

She comforted Amélie as best she could, while needing strength herself to bear the bitter cross laid upon them both, in the sudden blighting of that noble life of which they had been so proud.

She took Amélie in her arms, mingling her own tears with hers, and bidding her not despair. “A sister's love,” said she, “never forgets, never wearies, never despairs.” They had friends too powerful to be withstood, even by Bigot, and the Intendant would be compelled to loosen his hold upon Le Gardeur. She would rely upon the inherent nobleness of the nature of Le Gardeur himself to wash itself pure of all stain, could they only withdraw him from the seductions of the Palace. “We will win him from them by counter charms, Amélie, and it will be seen that virtue is stronger than vice to conquer at last the heart of Le Gardeur.”

“Alas, aunt!” replied the poor girl, her eyes suffused with tears, “neither friend nor foe will avail to turn him from the way he has resolved to go. He is desperate, and rushes with open eyes upon his ruin. We know the reason of it all. There is but one who could have saved Le Gardeur if she would. She is utterly unworthy of my brother, but I feel now it were better Le Gardeur had married even her than that he should be utterly lost to himself and us all. I will see Angélique des Meloises myself. It was her summons brought him back to the city. She alone can withdraw him from the vile companionship of Bigot and his associates at the Palace.”

Angélique had been duly informed of the return of Amélie to the city, and of her fruitless visits to the Palace to see her brother.

It was no pleasure, but a source of angry disappointment to Angélique that Le Gardeur, in despair of making her his wife, refused to devote himself to her as her lover. He was running wild to destruction, instead of letting her win the husband she aspired to, and retain at the same time the gallant she loved and was not willing to forego.

She had seen him at the first sober moment after his return from Tilly, in obedience to her summons. She had permitted him to pour out again his passion at her feet. She had yielded to his kisses when he claimed her heart and hand, and had not refused to own the mutual flame that covered her cheek with a blush at her own falseness. But driven to the wall by his impetuosity, she had at last killed his reviving hopes by her repetition of the fatal words, “I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you!”

Angélique was seized with a sudden impulse to withdraw from the presence of Amélie in the Cathedral before being discovered by her. She was half afraid that her former school companion would speak to her on the subject of Le Gardeur. She could not brazen it out with Amélie, who knew her too well, and if she could, she would gladly avoid the angry flash of those dark, pure eyes.

The organ was pealing the last notes of the Doxology, and the voices of the choristers seemed to reëcho from the depths of eternity the words, “in saecula saeculorum,” when Angélique rose up suddenly to leave the church.

Her irreverent haste caused those about her to turn their heads at the slight confusion she made, Amélie among the rest, who recognized at once the countenance of Angélique, somewhat flushed and irritated, as she strove vainly, with the help of La Force, to get out of the throng of kneeling people who covered the broad floor of the Cathedral.

Amélie deemed it a fortunate chance to meet Angélique so opportunely--just when her desire to do so was strongest. She caught her eye, and made her a quick sign to stay, and approaching her, seized her hands in her old, affectionate way.

“Wait a few moments, Angélique,” said she, “until the people depart. I want to speak to you alone. I am so fortunate to find you here.”

“I will see you outside, Amélie. The Sieur La Force is with me, and cannot stay.” Angélique dreaded an interview with Amélie.

“No, I will speak to you here. It will be better here in God's temple than elsewhere. The Sieur La Force will wait for you if you ask him; or shall I ask him?” A faint smile accompanied these words of Amélie, which she partly addressed to La Force.

La Force, to Angélique's chagrin, understanding that Amélie desired him to wait for Angélique outside, at once offered to do so.

“Or perhaps,” continued Amélie, offering her hand, “the Sieur La Force, whom I am glad to see, will have the politeness to accompany the Lady de Tilly, while I speak to Mademoiselle des Meloises?”

La Force was all compliance. “He was quite at the service of the ladies,” he said politely, “and would esteem it an honor to accompany the noble Lady de Tilly.”

The Lady de Tilly at once saw through the design of her niece. She acceded to the arrangement, and left the Cathedral in company with the Sieur La Force, whom she knew as the son of an old and valued friend.

He accompanied her home, while Amélie, holding fast to the arm of Angélique until the church was empty of all but a few scattered devotees and penitents, led her into a side chapel, separated from the body of the church by a screen of carved work of oak, wherein stood a small altar and a reliquary with a picture of St. Paul.

The seclusion of this place commended itself to the feelings of Amélie. She made Angélique kneel down by her side before the altar. After breathing a short, silent prayer for help and guidance, she seized her companion by both hands and besought her “in God's name to tell her what she had done to Le Gardeur, who was ruining himself, both soul and body.”

Angélique, hardy as she was, could ill bear the searching gaze of those pure eyes. She quailed under them for a moment, afraid that the question might have some reference to Beaumanoir, but reassured by the words of Amélie, that her interview had relation to Le Gardeur only, she replied: “I have done nothing to make Le Gardeur ruin himself, soul or body, Amélie. Nor do I believe he is doing so. Our old convent notions are too narrow to take out with us into the world. You judge Le Gardeur too rigidly, Amélie.”

“Would that were my fault, Angélique!” replied she earnestly, “but my heart tells me he is lost unless those who led him astray remit him again into the path of virtue whence they seduced him.”

Angélique winced, for she took the allusion to herself, although in the mind of Amélie it referred more to the Intendant. “Le Gardeur is no weakling to be led astray,” replied she. “He is a strong man, to lead others, not to be led, as I know better than even his sister.”

Amélie looked up inquiringly, but Angélique did not pursue the thought nor explain the meaning of her words.

“Le Gardeur,” continued Angélique, “is not worse, nay, with all his faults, is far better than most young gallants, who have the laudable ambition to make a figure in the world, such as women admire. One cannot hope to find men saints, and we women to be such sinners. Saints would be dull companions. I prefer mere men, Amélie!”

“For shame, Angélique! to say such things before the sacred shrine,” exclaimed Amélie, indignantly stopping her. “What wonder that men are wicked, when women tempt them to be so! Le Gardeur was like none of the gallants you compare him with! He loved virtue and hated vice, and above all things he despised the companionship of such men as now detain him at the Palace. You first took him from me, Angélique! I ask you now to give him back to me. Give me back my brother, Angélique des Meloises!” Amélie grasped her by the arm in the earnestness of her appeal.

“I took him from you?” exclaimed Angélique hotly. “It is untrue! Forgive my saying so, Amélie! I took him no more than did Héloise de Lotbinière or Cecile Tourangeau! Will you hear the truth? He fell in love with me, and I had not the heart to repulse him,--nay, I could not, for I will confess to you, Amélie, as I often avowed to you in the Convent, I loved Le Gardeur the best of all my admirers! And by this blessed shrine,” continued she, laying her hand upon it, “I do still! If he be, as some say he is, going too fast for his own good or yours or mine, I regret it with my whole heart; I regret it as you do! Can I say more?”

Angélique was sincere in this. Her words sounded honest, and she spoke with a real warmth in her bosom, such as she had not felt in a long time.

Her words impressed Amélie favorably.

“I think you speak truly, Angélique,” replied she, “when you say you regret Le Gardeur's relapse into the evil ways of the Palace. No one that ever knew my noble brother could do other than regret it. But oh, Angélique, why, with all your influence over him did you not prevent it? Why do you not rescue him now? A word from you would have been of more avail than the pleading of all the world beside!”

“Amélie, you try me hard,” said Angélique, uneasily, conscious of the truth of Amélie's words, “but I can bear much for the sake of Le Gardeur! Be assured that I have no power to influence his conduct in the way of amendment, except upon impossible conditions! I have tried, and my efforts have been vain as your own!”

“Conditions!” replied Amélie, “what conditions?--but I need not ask you! He told me in his hour of agony of your inexplicable dealing with him, and yet not so inexplicable now! Why did you profess to love my brother, leading him on and on to an offer of his hand, and then cruelly reject him, adding one more to the list of your heartless triumphs? Le Gardeur de Repentigny was too good for such a fate from any woman, Angélique!” Amélie's eyes swam in tears of indignation as she said this.

“He was too good for me!” said Angélique, dropping her eyes. “I will acknowledge that, if it will do you any good, Amélie! But can you not believe that there was a sacrifice on my part, as well as on his or yours?”

“I judge not between you, Angélique! or between the many chances wasted on you; but I say this Angélique des Meloises, you wickedly stole the heart of the noblest brother in New France, to trample it under your feet!”

“'Fore God, I did not, Amélie!” she replied indignantly. “I loved and do love Le Gardeur de Repentigny, but I never plighted my troth to him, I never deceived him! I told him I loved him, but I could not marry him! And by this sacred cross,” said she, placing her hands upon it, “it is true! I never trampled upon the heart of Le Gardeur; I could kiss his hands, his feet, with true affection as ever loving woman gave to man; but my duty, my troth, my fate, were in the hands of another!”

Angélique felt a degree of pleasure in the confession to Amélie of her love for her brother. It was the next thing to confessing it to himself, which had been once the joy of her life, but it changed not one jot her determination to wed only the Intendant, unless--yes, her busy mind had to-day called up a thousand possible and impossible contingencies that might spring up out of the unexpected use of the stiletto by Corriveau. What if the Intendant, suspecting her complicity in the murder of Caroline, should refuse to marry her? Were it not well in that desperate case to have Le Gardeur to fall back upon?

Amélie watched nervously the changing countenance of Angélique. She knew it was a beautiful mask covering impenetrable deceit, and that no principle of right kept her from wrong when wrong was either pleasant or profitable.

The conviction came upon Amélie like a flash of inspiration that she was wrong in seeking to save Le Gardeur by seconding his wild offer of marriage to Angélique. A union with this false and capricious woman would only make his ruin more complete and his latter end worse than the first. She would not urge it, she thought.

“Angélique,” said she, “if you love Le Gardeur, you will not refuse your help to rescue him from the Palace. You cannot wish to see him degraded as a gentleman because he has been rejected by you as a lover.”

“Who says I wish to see him degraded as a gentleman? and I did not reject him as a lover! not finally--that is, I did not wholly mean it. When I sent to invite his return from Tilly it was out of friendship,--love, if you will, Amélie, but from no desire that he should plunge into fresh dissipation.”

“I believe you, Angélique! You could not, if you had the heart of a woman loving him ever so little, desire to see him fall into the clutches of men who, with the wine-cup in one hand and the dice-box in the other, will never rest until they ruin him, body, soul, and estate.”

“Before God, I never desired it, and to prove it, I have cursed De Pean to his face, and erased Lantagnac from my list of friends, for coming to show me the money he had won from Le Gardeur while intoxicated. Lantagnac brought me a set of pearls which he had purchased out of his winnings. I threw them into the fire and would have thrown him after them, had I been a man! 'fore God, I would, Amélie! I may have wounded Le Gardeur, but no other man or woman shall injure him with my consent.”

Angélique spoke this in a tone of sincerity that touched somewhat the heart of Amélie, although the aberrations and inconsistencies of this strange girl perplexed her to the utmost to understand what she really felt.

“I think I may trust you, Angélique, to help me to rescue him from association with the Palace?” said Amélie, gently, almost submissively, as if she half feared a refusal.

“I desire nothing more,” replied Angélique. “You have little faith in me, I see that,”--Angélique wiped her eyes, in which a shade of moisture could be seen,--“but I am sincere in my friendship for Le Gardeur. The Virgin be my witness, I never wished his injury, even when I injured him most. He sought me in marriage, and I was bound to another.”

“You are to marry the Intendant, they say. I do not wonder, and yet I do wonder, at your refusing my brother, even for him.”

“Marry the Intendant! Yes, it is what fools and some wise people say. I never said it myself, Amélie.”

“But you mean it, nevertheless; and for no other would you have thrown over Le Gardeur de Repentigny.”

“I did not throw him over,” she answered, indignantly. “But why dispute? I cannot, Amélie, say more, even to you! I am distraught with cares and anxieties, and know not which way to turn.”

“Turn here, where I turn in my troubles, Angélique!” replied Amélie, moving closer to the altar. “Let us pray for Le Gardeur.” Angélique obeyed mechanically, and the two girls prayed silently for a few moments, but how differently in spirit and feeling! The one prayed for her brother,--the other tried to pray, but it was more for herself, for safety in her crime and success in her deep-laid scheming. A prayer for Le Gardeur mingled with Angélique's devotions, giving them a color of virtue. Her desire for his welfare was sincere enough, and she thought it disinterested of herself to pray for him.

Suddenly Angélique started up as if stung by a wasp. “I must take leave of you, my Amélie,” said she; “I am glad I met you here. I trust you understand me now, and will rely on my being as a sister to Le Gardeur, to do what I can to restore him perfect to you and the good Lady de Tilly.”

Amélie was touched. She embraced Angélique and kissed her; yet so cold and impassive she felt her to be, a shiver ran through her as she did so. It was as if she had touched the dead, and she long afterwards thought of it. There was a mystery in this strange girl that Amélie could not fathom nor guess the meaning of. They left the Cathedral together. It was now quite empty, save of a lingering penitent or two kneeling at the shrines. Angélique and Amélie parted at the door, the one eastward, the other westward, and, carried away by the divergent currents of their lives, they never met again.

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