Le Gardeur was too drunk to catch the full drift of the Intendant's reference to the Bourgeois under the metaphor of Actaeon torn in pieces by his own dog. He only comprehended enough to know that something was intended to the disparagement of the Philiberts, and firing up at the idea, swore loudly that “neither the Intendant nor all the Grand Company in mass should harm a hair of the Bourgeois's head!”

“It is the dog!” exclaimed De Pean, “which the Company will hang, not his master, nor your friend his son, nor your friend's friend the old Huguenot witch! We will let them hang themselves when their time comes; but it is the Golden Dog we mean to hang at present, Le Gardeur!”

“Yes! I see!” replied Le Gardeur, looking very hazy. “Hang the Golden Dog as much as you will, but as to the man that touches his master, I say he will have to fight ME, that is all.” Le Gardeur, after one or two vain attempts, succeeded in drawing his sword, and laid it upon the table.

“Do you see that, De Pean? That is the sword of a gentleman, and I will run it through the heart of any man who says he will hurt a hair of the head of Pierre Philibert, or the Bourgeois, or even the old Huguenot witch, as you call Dame Rochelle, who is a lady, and too good to be either your mother, aunt, or cater cousin, in any way, De Pean!”

“By St. Picot! You have mistaken your man, De Pean!” whispered Cadet. “Why the deuce did you pitch upon Le Gardeur to carry out your bright idea?”

“I pitched upon him because he is the best man for our turn. But I am right. You will see I am right. Le Gardeur is the pink of morality when he is sober. He would kill the devil when he is half drunk, but when wholly drunk he would storm paradise, and sack and slay like a German ritter. He would kill his own grandfather. I have not erred in choosing him.”

Bigot watched this by-play with intense interest. He saw that Le Gardeur was a two-edged weapon just as likely to cut his friends as his enemies, unless skilfully held in hand, and blinded as to when and whom he should strike.

“Come, Le Gardeur, put up your sword!” exclaimed Bigot, coaxingly; “we have better game to bring down to-night than the Golden Dog. Hark! They are coming! Open wide the doors, and let the blessed peacemakers enter!”

“The peacemakers!” ejaculated Cadet; “the cause of every quarrel among men since the creation of the world! What made you send for the women, Bigot?”

“Oh, not to say their prayers, you may be sure, old misogynist, but this being a gala-night at the Palace, the girls and fiddlers were ordered up by De Pean, and we will see you dance fandangoes with them until morning, Cadet.”

“No you won't! Damn the women! I wish you had kept them away, that is all. It spoils my fun, Bigot!”

“But it helps the Company's! Here they come!”

Their appearance at the door caused a hubbub of excitement among the gentlemen, who hurried forward to salute a dozen or more women dressed in the extreme of fashion, who came forward with plentiful lack of modesty, and a superabundance of gaiety and laughter.

Le Gardeur and Cadet did not rise like the rest, but kept their seats. Cadet swore that De Pean had spoiled a jolly evening by inviting the women to the Palace.

These women had been invited by De Pean to give zest to the wild orgie that was intended to prepare Le Gardeur for their plot of to-morrow, which was to compass the fall of the Bourgeois. They sat down with the gentlemen, listening with peals of laughter to their coarse jests, and tempting them to wilder follies. They drank, they sang, they danced and conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fÊtes of the Parc aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of the Intendant.

In that wild fashion Bigot had passed the night previous to his present visit to AngÉlique. The Chevalier de Pean rode the length of the Grande AllÉe and returned. The valet and horse of the Intendant were still waiting at the door, and De Pean saw Bigot and AngÉlique still seated at the window engaged in a lively conversation, and not apparently noticing his presence in the street as he sat pulling hairs out of the mane of his horse, “with the air of a man in love,” as AngÉlique laughingly remarked to Bigot.

Her quick eye, which nothing could escape, had seen De Pean the first time he passed the house. She knew that he had come to visit her, and seeing the horse of the Intendant at the door, had forborne to enter,—that would not have been the way with Le Gardeur, she thought. He would have entered all the readier had even the Dauphin held her in conversation.

AngÉlique was woman enough to like best the bold gallant who carries the female heart by storm and puts the parleying garrison of denial to the sword, as the Sabine women admired the spirit of their Roman captors and became the most faithful of wives.

De Pean, clever and unprincipled, was a menial in his soul, as cringing to his superiors as he was arrogant to those below him.

“Fellow!” said he to Bigot's groom, “how long has the Intendant been here?”

“All the afternoon, Chevalier,” replied the man, respectfully uncovering his head.

“Hum! and have they sat at the window all the time?”

“I have no eyes to watch my master,” replied the groom; “I do not know.”

“Oh!” was the reply of De Pean, as he suddenly reflected that it were best for himself also not to be seen watching his master too closely. He uttered a spurt of ill humor, and continued pulling the mane of his horse through his fingers.

“The Chevalier de Pean is practising patience to-day, Bigot,” said she; “and you give him enough time to exercise it.”

“You wish me gone, AngÉlique!” said he, rising; “the Chevalier de Pean is naturally waxing impatient, and you too!”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed she; “he shall wait as long as I please to keep him there.”

“Or as long as I stay. He is an accommodating lover, and will make an equally accommodating husband for his wife's friend some day!” remarked Bigot laughingly.

AngÉlique's eyes flashed out fire, but she little knew how true a word Bigot had spoken in jest. She could have choked him for mentioning her in connection with De Pean, but remembering she was now at his mercy, it was necessary to cheat and cozen this man by trying to please him.

“Well, if you must go, you must, Chevalier! Let me tie that string,” continued she, approaching him in her easy manner. The knot of his cravat was loose. Bigot glanced admiringly at her slightly flushed cheek and dainty fingers as she tied the loose ends of his rich steinkirk together.

“'Tis like love,” said she, laughingly; “a slip-knot that looks tied until it is tried.”

She glanced at Bigot, expecting him to thank her, which he did with a simple word. The thought of Caroline flashed over his mind like lightning at that moment. She, too, as they walked on the shore of the Bay of Minas had once tied the string of his cravat, when for the first time he read in her flushed cheek and trembling fingers that she loved him. Bigot, hardy as he was and reckless, refrained from touching the hand or even looking at AngÉlique at this moment.

With the quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation. But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to AngÉlique more than he had done.

“Thanks for tying the knot, AngÉlique,” said he at length. “It is a hard knot, mine, is it not, both to tie and to untie?”

She looked at him, not pretending to understand any meaning he might attach to his words. “Yes, it is a hard knot to tie, yours, Bigot, and you do not seem particularly to thank me for my service. Have you discovered the hidden place of your fair fugitive yet?” She said this just as he turned to depart. It was the feminine postscript to their interview.

Bigot's avoidance of any allusion to the death of Caroline was a terrible mark of suspicion; less in reality, however, than it seemed.

Bigot, although suspicious, could find no clue to the real perpetrators of the murder. He knew it had not been AngÉlique herself in person. He had never heard her speak of La Corriveau. Not the smallest ray of light penetrated the dark mystery.

“I do not believe she has left Beaumanoir, Bigot,” continued AngÉlique; “or if she has, you know her hiding-place. Will you swear on my book of hours that you know not where she is to be found?”

He looked fixedly at AngÉlique for a moment, trying to read her thoughts, but she had rehearsed her part too often and too well to look pale or confused. She felt her eyebrow twitch, but she pressed it with her fingers, believing Bigot did not observe it, but he did.

“I will swear and curse both, if you wish it, AngÉlique,” replied he. “Which shall it be?”

“Well, do both,—swear at me and curse the day that I banished Le Gardeur de Repentigny for your sake, FranÇois Bigot! If the lady be gone, where is your promise?”

Bigot burst into a wild laugh, as was his wont when hard-pressed. He had not, to be sure, made any definite promise to AngÉlique, but he had flattered her with hopes of marriage never intended to be realized.

“I keep my promises to ladies as if I had sworn by St. Dorothy,” replied he.

“But your promise to me, Bigot! Will you keep it, or do worse?” asked she, impatiently.

“Keep it or do worse! What mean you, AngÉlique?” He looked up in genuine surprise. This was not the usual tone of women towards him.

“I mean that nothing will be better for FranÇois Bigot than to keep his promise, nor worse than to break it, to AngÉlique des Meloises!” replied she, with a stamp of her foot, as was her manner when excited.

She thought it safe to use an implied threat, which at any rate might reach the thought that lay under his heart like a centipede under a stone which some chance foot turns over.

But Bigot minded not the implied threat. He was immovable in the direction she wished him to move. He understood her allusion, but would not appear to understand it, lest worse than she meant should come of it.

“Forgive me, AngÉlique!” said he, with a sudden change from frigidity to fondness. “I am not unmindful of my promises; there is nothing better to myself than to keep them, nothing worse than to break them. Beaumanoir is now without reproach, and you can visit it without fear of aught but the ghosts in the gallery.”

AngÉlique feared no ghosts, but she did fear that the Intendant's words implied a suggestion of one which might haunt it for the future, if there were any truth in tales.

“How can you warrant that, Bigot?” asked she dubiously.

“Because Pierre Philibert and La Corne St. Luc have been with the King's warrant and searched the chÂteau from crypt to attic, without finding a trace of your rival.”

“What, Chevalier, searched the ChÂteau of the Intendant?”

“Par bleu! yes, I insisted upon their doing so; not, however, till they had gone through the Castle of St. Louis. They apologized to me for finding nothing. What did they expect to find, think you?”

“The lady, to be sure! Oh, Bigot,” continued she, tapping him with her fan, “if they would send a commission of women to search for her, the secret could not remain hid.”

“No, truly, AngÉlique! If you were on such a commission to search for the secret of her.”

“Well, Bigot, I would never betray it, if I knew it,” answered she, promptly.

“You swear to that, AngÉlique?” asked he, looking full in her eyes, which did not flinch under his gaze.

“Yes; on my book of hours, as you did!” said she.

“Well, there is my hand upon it, AngÉlique. I have no secret to tell respecting her. She has gone, I cannot tell WHITHER.”

AngÉlique gave him her hand on the lie. She knew he was playing with her, as she with him, a game of mutual deception, which both knew to be such. And yet they must, circumstanced as they were, play it out to the end, which end, she hoped, would be her marriage with this arch-deceiver. A breach of their alliance was as dangerous as it would be unprofitable to both.

Bigot rose to depart with an air of gay regret at leaving the company of AngÉlique to make room for De Pean, “who,” he said, “would pull every hair out of his horse's mane if he waited much longer.”

“Your visit is no pleasure to you, Bigot,” said she, looking hard at him. “You are discontented with me, and would rather go than stay!”

“Well, AngÉlique, I am a dissatisfied man to-day. The mysterious disappearance of that girl from Beaumanoir is the cause of my discontent. The defiant boldness of the Bourgeois Philibert is another. I have heard to-day that the Bourgeois has chartered every ship that is to sail to France during the remainder of the autumn. These things are provoking enough, but they drive me for consolation to you. But for you I should shut myself up in Beaumanoir, and let every thing go helter-skelter to the devil.”

“You only flatter me and do not mean it!” said she, as he took her hand with an over-empressement as perceptible to her as was his occasional coldness.

“By all the saints! I mean it,” said he. But he did not deceive her. His professions were not all true, but how far they were true was a question that again and again tormented her, and set her bosom palpitating as he left her room with his usual courteous salute.

“He suspects me! He more than suspects me!” said she to herself as Bigot passed out of the mansion and mounted his horse to ride off. “He would speak out plainer if he dared avow that that woman was in truth the missing Caroline de St. Castin!” thought she with savage bitterness.

“I have a bit in your mouth there, FranÇois Bigot, that will forever hold you in check. That missing demoiselle, no one knows as you do where she is. I would give away every jewel I own to know what you did with the pretty piece of mortality left on your hands by La Corriveau.”

Thus soliloquized AngÉlique for a few moments, looking gloomy and beautiful as Medea, when the step of De Pean sounded up the broad stair.

With a sudden transformation, as if touched by a magic wand, AngÉlique sprang forward, all smiles and fascinations to greet his entrance.

The Chevalier de Pean had long made distant and timid pretensions to her favor, but he had been overborne by a dozen rivals. He was incapable of love in any honest sense; but he had immense vanity. He had been barely noticed among the crowd of AngÉlique's admirers. “He was only food for powder,” she had laughingly remarked upon one occasion, when a duel on her account seemed to be impending between De Pean and the young Captain de Tours; and beyond doubt AngÉlique would have been far prouder of him shot for her sake in a duel than she was of his living attentions.

She was not sorry, however, that he came in to-day after the departure of the Intendant. It kept her from her own thoughts, which were bitter enough when alone. Moreover, she never tired of any amount of homage and admiration, come from what quarter it would.

De Pean stayed long with AngÉlique. How far he opened the details of the plot to create a riot in the market-place that afternoon can only be conjectured by the fact of her agreeing to ride out at the hour designated, which she warmly consented to do as soon as De Pean informed her that Le Gardeur would be there and might be expected to have a hand in the tumult raised against the Golden Dog. The conference over, AngÉlique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it.