“Did I not know for a certainty that she was present till midnight at the party given by Madame de Grandmaison, I should suspect her, by God!” exclaimed the Intendant, as he paced up and down his private room in the Palace, angry and perplexed to the uttermost over the mysterious assassination at Beaumanoir. “What think you, Cadet?”

“I think that proves an alibi,” replied Cadet, stretching himself lazily in an armchair and smoking with half-shut eyes. There was a cynical, mocking tone in his voice which seemed to imply that although it proved an alibi, it did not prove innocence to the satisfaction of the Sieur Cadet.

“You think more than you say, Cadet. Out with it! Let me hear the worst of your suspicions. I fancy they chime with mine,” said the Intendant, in quick reply.

“As the bells of the Cathedral with the bells of the Recollets,” drawled out Cadet. “I think she did it, Bigot, and you think the same; but I should not like to be called upon to prove it, nor you either,—not for the sake of the pretty witch, but for your own.”

“I could prove nothing, Cadet. She was the gayest and most light-hearted of all the company last night at Madame de Grandmaison's. I have made the most particular inquiries of Varin and Deschenaux. They needed no asking, but burst out at once into praise and admiration of her gaiety and wit. It is certain she was not at Beaumanoir.”

“You often boasted you knew women better than I, and I yielded the point in regard to AngÉlique,” replied Cadet, refilling his pipe. “I did not profess to fathom the depths of that girl, but I thought you knew her. Egad! she has been too clever for you, Bigot! She has aimed to be the Lady Intendant, and is in a fair way to succeed! That girl has the spirit of a war-horse; she would carry any man round the world. I wish she would carry me. I would rule Versailles in six weeks, with that woman, Bigot!”

“The same thought has occurred to me, Cadet, and I might have been entrapped by it had not this cursed affair happened. La Pompadour is a simpleton beside AngÉlique des Meloises! My difficulty is to believe her so mad as to have ventured on this bold deed.”

“'Tis not the boldness, only the uselessness of it, would stop AngÉlique!” answered Cadet, shutting one eye with an air of lazy comfort.

“But the deceitfulness of it, Cadet! A girl like her could not be so gay last night with such a bloody purpose on her soul. Could she, think you?”

“Couldn't she? Tut! Deceit is every woman's nature! Her wardrobe is not complete unless it contains as many lies for her occasions as ribbons for her adornment!”

“You believe she did it then? What makes you think so, Cadet?” asked Bigot eagerly, drawing near his companion.

“Why, she and you are the only persons on earth who had an interest in that girl's death. She to get a dangerous rival out of the way,—you to hide her from the search-warrants sent out by La Pompadour. You did not do it, I know: ergo, she did! Can any logic be plainer? That is the reason I think so, Bigot.”

“But how has it been accomplished, Cadet? Have you any theory? SHE can not have done it with her own hand.”

“Why, there is only one way that I can see. We know she did not do the murder herself, therefore she has done it by the hand of another. Here is proof of a confederate, Bigot,—I picked this up in the secret chamber.” Cadet drew out of his pocket the fragment of the letter torn in pieces by La Corriveau. “Is this the handwriting of AngÉlique?” asked he.

Bigot seized the scrap of paper, read it, turned it over and scrutinized it, striving to find resemblances between the writing and that of every one known to him. His scrutiny was in vain.

“This writing is not AngÉlique's,” said he. “It is utterly unknown to me. It is a woman's hand, but certainly not the hand of any woman of my acquaintance, and I have letters and billets from almost every lady in Quebec. It is proof of a confederate, however, for listen, Cadet! It arranges for an interview with Caroline, poor girl! It was thus she was betrayed to her death. It is torn, but enough remains to make the sense clear,—listen: 'At the arched door about midnight—if she pleased to admit her she would learn important matters concerning herself—the Intendant and the Baron de St. Castin—speedily arrive in the Colony.' That throws light upon the mystery, Cadet! A woman was to have an interview with Caroline at midnight! Good God, Cadet! not two hours before we arrived! And we deferred starting in order that we might rook the Signeur de Port Neuf! Too late! too late! Oh cursed word that ever seals our fate when we propose a good deed!” and Bigot felt himself a man injured and neglected by Providence.

“'Important matters relating to herself,'” repeated Bigot, reading again the scrap of writing. “'The Intendant and the Baron de St. Castin—speedily to arrive in the Colony.' No one knew but the sworn Councillors of the Governor that the Baron de St. Castin was coming out to the Colony. A woman has done the deed, and she has been informed of secrets spoken in Council by some Councillor present on that day at the Castle. Who was he? and who was she?” questioned Bigot, excitedly.

“The argument runs like water down hill, Bigot! but, par Dieu! I would not have believed that New France contained two women of such mettle as the one to contrive, the other to execute, a masterpiece of devilment like that!”

“Since we find another hand in the dish, it may not have been AngÉlique after all,” remarked Bigot. “It is hard to believe one so fair and free-spoken guilty of so dark and damnable a crime.” Bigot would evidently be glad to find himself in error touching his suspicions.

“Fairest without is often foulest within, Bigot,” answered Cadet, doggedly. “Open speech in a woman is often an open trap to catch fools! AngÉlique des Meloises is free-spoken and open-handed enough to deceive a conclave of cardinals; but she has the lightest heels in the city. Would you not like to see her dance a ballet de triomphe on the broad flagstone I laid over the grave of that poor girl? If you would, you have only to marry her, and she will give a ball in the secret chamber!”

“Be still, Cadet! I could take you by the throat for suggesting it! But I will make her prove herself innocent!” exclaimed Bigot, angry at the cool persistence of Cadet.

“I hope you will not try it to-day, Bigot.” Cadet spoke gravely now. “Let the dead sleep, and let all sleeping dogs and bitches lie still. Zounds! we are in greater danger than she is! you cannot stir in this matter without putting yourself in her power. AngÉlique has got hold of the secret of Caroline and of the Baron de St. Castin; what if she clear herself by accusing you? The King would put you in the Bastile for the magnificent lie you told the Governor, and La Pompadour would send you to the Place de GrÈve when the Baron de St. Castin returned with the bones of his daughter, dug up in your ChÂteau!”

“It is a cursed dilemma!” Bigot fairly writhed with perplexity. “Dark as the bottomless pit, turn which way we will. AngÉlique knows too much, that is clear; it were a charity, if it were a safe thing, to kill her too, Cadet!”

“Not to be thought of, Bigot; she is too much in every man's eye, and cannot be stowed away in a secret corner like her poor victim. A dead silence on every point of this cursed business is our only policy, our only safety.” Cadet had plenty of common sense in the rough, and Bigot was able to appreciate it.

The Intendant strode up and down the room, clenching his hands in a fury. “If I were sure! sure! she did it, I would kill her, by God! such a damnable cruel deed as this would justify any measure of vengeance!” exclaimed he, savagely.

“Pshaw! not when it would all rebound upon yourself. Besides, if you want vengeance, take a man's revenge upon a woman; you can do that! It will be better than killing her, much more pleasant, and quite as effectual.”

Bigot looked as Cadet said this and laughed: “You would send her to the Parc aux cerfs, eh, Cadet? Par Dieu! she would sit on the throne in six months!”

“No, I do not mean the Parc aux cerfs, but the ChÂteau of Beaumanoir. But you are in too ill humor to joke to-day, Bigot.” Cadet resumed his pipe with an air of nonchalance.

“I never was in a worse humor in my life, Cadet! I feel that I have a padlock upon every one of my five senses; and I cannot move hand or foot in this business.”

“Right, Bigot, do not move hand or foot, eye or tongue, in it. I tell you the slightest whisper of Caroline's life or death in your house, reaching the ears of Philibert or La Corne St. Luc, will bring them to Beaumanoir with warrants to search for her. They will pick the ChÂteau to pieces stone by stone. They will drag Caroline out of her grave, and the whole country will swear you murdered her, and that I helped you, and with appearances so strong against us that the mothers who bore us would not believe in our innocence! Damn the women! The burying of that girl was the best deed I did for one of the sex in my life, but it will be the worst if you breath one word of it to AngÉlique des Meloises, or to any other person living. I am not ready to lose my head yet, Bigot, for the sake of any woman, or even for you!”

The Intendant was staggered by the vehemence of Cadet, and impressed by the force of his remarks. It was hard to sit down quietly and condone such a crime, but he saw clearly the danger of pushing inquiry in any direction without turning suspicion upon himself. He boiled with indignation. He fumed and swore worse than his wont when angry, but Cadet looked on quietly, smoking his pipe, waiting for the storm to calm down.

“You were never in a woman's clutches so tight before, Bigot,” continued Cadet. “If you let La Pompadour suspect one hair of your head in this matter, she will spin a cart-rope out of it that will drag you to the Place de GrÈve.”

“Reason tells me that what you say is true, Cadet,” replied Bigot, gloomily.

“To be sure; but is not AngÉlique a clever witch to bind FranÇois Bigot neck and heels in that way, after fairly outwitting and running him down?”

Cadet's cool comments drove Bigot beside himself. “I will not stand it; by St. Maur! she shall pay for all this! I, who have caught women all my life, to be caught by one thus! she shall pay for it!”

“Well, make her pay for it by marrying her!” replied Cadet. “Par Dieu! I am mistaken if you have not got to marry her in the end! I would marry her myself, if you do not, only I should be afraid to sleep nights! I might be put under the floor before morning if she liked another man better!”

Cadet gave way to a feeling of hilarity at this idea, shaking his sides so long and heartily that Bigot caught the infection, and joined in with a burst of sardonic laughter.

Bigot's laughter was soon over. He sat down at the table again, and, being now calm, considered the whole matter over, point by point, with Cadet, who, though coarse and unprincipled, was a shrewd counsellor in difficulties.

It was determined between the two men that nothing whatever should be said of the assassination. Bigot should continue his gallantries to AngÉlique, and avoid all show of suspicion in that quarter. He should tell her of the disappearance of Caroline, who had gone away mysteriously as she came, but profess absolute ignorance as to her fate.

AngÉlique would be equally cautious in alluding to the murder; she would pretend to accept all his statements as absolute fact. Her tongue, if not her thoughts, would be sealed up in perpetual silence on that bloody topic. Bigot must feed her with hopes of marriage, and if necessary set a day for it, far enough off to cover all the time to be taken up in the search after Caroline.

“I will never marry her, Cadet!” exclaimed Bigot, “but will make her regret all her life she did not marry me!”

“Take care, Bigot! It is dangerous playing with fire. You don't half know AngÉlique.”

“I mean she shall pull the chestnuts out of the fire for me with her pretty fingers, until she burn them,” remarked Bigot, gruffly.

“I would not trust her too far! In all seriousness, you have but the choice of two things, Bigot: marry her or send her to the Convent.”

“I would not do the one, and I could not do the other, Cadet,” was Bigot's prompt reply to this suggestion.

“Tut! MÈre Migeon de la NativitÉ will respect your lettre de cachet, and provide a close, comfortable cell for this pretty penitent in the Ursulines,” said Cadet.

“Not she! MÈre Migeon gave me one of her parlor-lectures once, and I care not for another. Egad, Cadet! she made me the nearest of being ashamed of FranÇois Bigot of any one I ever listened to! Could you have seen her, with her veil thrown back, her pale face still paler with indignation, her black eyes looking still blacker beneath the white fillet upon her forehead, and then her tongue, Cadet! Well, I withdrew my proposal and felt myself rather cheapened in the presence of MÈre Migeon.”

“Ay, I hear she is a clipper when she gets a sinner by the hair! What was the proposal you made to her, Bigot?” asked Cadet, smiling as if he knew.

“Oh, it was not worth a livre to make such a row about! I only proposed to send a truant damsel to the Convent to repent of MY faults, that was all! But I could never dispose of AngÉlique in that way,” continued the Intendant, with a shrug.

“Egad! she will fool any man faster than he can make a fool of her! But I would try MÈre Migeon, notwithstanding,” replied Cadet. “She is the only one to break in this wild filly and nail her tongue fast to her prayers!”

“It is useless trying. They know AngÉlique too well. She would turn the Convent out of the windows in the time of a neuvaine. They are all really afraid of her,” replied Bigot.

“Then you must marry her, or do worse, Bigot. I see nothing else for it,” was Cadet's reply.

“Well, I will do worse, if worse can be; for marry her I will not!” said Bigot, stamping his foot upon the floor.

“It is understood, then, Bigot, not a word, a hint, a look is to be given to AngÉlique regarding your suspicions of her complicity in this murder?”

“Yes, it is understood. The secret is like the devil's tontine,—he catches the last possessor of it.”

“I expect to be the last, then, if I keep in your company, Bigot,” remarked Cadet.

Cadet having settled this point to his mind, reclined back in his easy chair and smoked on in silence, while the Intendant kept walking the floor anxiously, because he saw farther than his companion the shadows of coming events.

Sometimes he stopped impatiently at the window, beating a tattoo with his nails on the polished casement as he gazed out upon the beautiful parterres of autumnal flowers, beginning to shed their petals around the gardens of the Palace. He looked at them without seeing them. All that caught his eye was a bare rose-bush, from which he remembered he had plucked some white roses which he had sent to Caroline to adorn her oratory; and he thought of her face, more pale and delicate than any rose of Provence that ever bloomed. His thoughts ran violently in two parallel streams side by side, neither of them disappearing for a moment amid the crowd of other affairs that pressed upon his attention,—the murder of Caroline and the perquisition that was to be made for her in all quarters of the Colony. His own safety was too deeply involved in any discovery that might be made respecting her to allow him to drop the subject out of his thought for a moment.

By imposing absolute silence upon himself in the presence of AngÉlique, touching the death of Caroline, he might impose a like silence upon her whom he could not acquit of the suspicion of having prompted the murder. But the certainty that there was a confederate in the deed—a woman, too, judging by the fragment of writing picked up by Cadet—tormented him with endless conjectures.

Still, he felt, for the present, secure from any discovery on that side; but how to escape from the sharp inquisition of two men like La Corne St. Luc and Pierre Philibert? And who knew how far the secret of Beaumanoir was a secret any longer? It was known to two women, at any rate; and no woman, in Bigot's estimation of the sex, would long keep a secret which concerned another and not herself.

“Our greatest danger, Cadet, lies there!” continued the Intendant, stopping in his walk and turning suddenly to his friend. “La Corne St. Luc and Pierre Philibert are commissioned by the Governor to search for that girl. They will not leave a stone unturned, a corner unransacked in New France. They will find out through the Hurons and my own servants that a woman has been concealed in Beaumanoir. They will suspect, if they do not discover who she was. They will not find her on earth,—they will look for her under the earth. And, by St. Maur! it makes me quake to think of it, Cadet, for the discovery will be utter ruin! They may at last dig up her murdered remains in my own ChÂteau! As you said, the Bastile and the Place de GrÈve would be my portion, and ruin yours and that of all our associates.”

Cadet held up his pipe as if appealing to Heaven. “It is a cursed reward for our charitable night's work, Bigot,” said he. “Better you had never lied about the girl. We could have brazened it out or fought it out with the Baron de St. Castin or any man in France! That lie will convict us if found out!”

“Pshaw! the lie was a necessity,” answered Bigot, impatiently. “But who could have dreamed of its leading us such a dance as it has done! Par Dieu! I have not often lied except to women, and such lies do not count! But I had better have stuck to truth in this matter, Cadet. I acknowledge that now.”

“Especially with La Pompadour! She is a woman. It is dangerous to lie to her,—at least about other women.”

“Well, Cadet, it is useless blessing the Pope or banning the Devil! We are in for it, and we must meet La Corne St. Luc and Pierre Philibert as warily as we can. I have been thinking of making safe ground for us to stand upon, as the trappers do on the great prairies, by kindling a fire in front to escape from the fire in the rear!”

“What is that, Bigot? I could fire the ChÂteau rather than be tracked out by La Corne and Philibert,” said Cadet, sitting upright in his chair.

“What, burn the ChÂteau!” answered Bigot. “You are mad, Cadet! No; but it were well to kindle such a smoke about the eyes of La Corne and Philibert that they will need to rub them to ease their own pain instead of looking for poor Caroline.”

“How, Bigot? Will you challenge and fight them? That will not avert suspicion, but increase it,” remarked Cadet.

“Well, you will see! A man will need as many eyes as Argus to discover our hands in this business.”

Cadet started, without conjecturing what the Intendant contemplated. “You will kill the bird that tells tales on us, Bigot,—is that it?” added he.

“I mean to kill two birds with one stone, Cadet! Hark you; I will tell you a scheme that will put a stop to these perquisitions by La Corne and Philibert—the only two men I fear in the Colony—and at the same time deliver me from the everlasting bark and bite of the Golden Dog!”

Bigot led Cadet to the window, and poured in his ear the burning passions which were fermenting in his own breast. He propounded a scheme of deliverance for himself and of crafty vengeance upon the Philiberts which would turn the thoughts of every one away from the ChÂteau of Beaumanoir and the missing Caroline into a new stream of public and private troubles, amid the confusion of which he would escape, and his present dangers be overlooked and forgotten in a great catastrophe that might upset the Colony, but at any rate it would free Bigot from his embarrassments and perhaps inaugurate a new reign of public plunder and the suppression of the whole party of the HonnÊtes Gens.