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.