“Come and see me to-night, Le Gardeur.” AngÉlique des Meloises drew the bridle sharply as she halted her spirited horse in front of the officer of the guard at the St. Louis Gate. “Come and see me to-night: I shall be at home to no one but you. Will you come?”

Had Le Gardeur de Repentigny been ever so laggard and indifferent a lover the touch of that pretty hand, and the glance from the dark eye that shot fire down into his very heart, would have decided him to obey this seductive invitation.

He held her hand as he looked up with a face radiant with joy. “I will surely come, AngÉlique; but tell me—”

She interrupted him laughingly: “No; I will tell you nothing till you come! So good-by till then.”

He would fain have prolonged the interview; but she capriciously shook the reins, and with a silvery laugh rode through the gateway and into the city. In a few minutes she dismounted at her own home, and giving her horse in charge of a groom, ran lightly up the broad steps into the house.

The family mansion of the Des Meloises was a tall and rather pretentious edifice overlooking the fashionable Rue St. Louis.

The house was, by a little artifice on the part of AngÉlique, empty of visitors this evening. Even her brother, the Chevalier des Meloises, with whom she lived, a man of high life and extreme fashion, was to-night enjoying the more congenial society of the officers of the Regiment de BÉarn. At this moment, amid the clash of glasses and the bubbling of wine, the excited and voluble Gascons were discussing in one breath the war, the council, the court, the ladies, and whatever gay topic was tossed from end to end of the crowded mess-table.

“Mademoiselle's hair has got loose and looks like a Huron's,” said her maid Lizette, as her nimble fingers reÄrranged the rich dark-golden locks of AngÉlique, which reached to the floor as she sat upon her fauteuil.

“No matter, Lizette; do it up À la Pompadour, and make haste. My brain is in as great confusion as my hair. I need repose for an hour. Remember, Lizette, I am at home to no one to-night except the Chevalier de Repentigny.”

“The Chevalier called this afternoon, Mademoiselle, and was sorry he did not find you at home,” replied Lizette, who saw the eyelashes of her mistress quiver and droop, while a flush deepened for an instant the roseate hue of her cheek.

“I was in the country, that accounts for it! There, my hair will do!” said AngÉlique, giving a glance in the great Venetian mirror before her. Her freshly donned robe of blue silk, edged with a foam of snowy laces and furbelows, set off her tall figure. Her arms, bare to the elbows, would have excited Juno's jealousy or Homer's verse to gather efforts in praise of them. Her dainty feet, shapely, aspiring, and full of character as her face, were carelessly thrust forward, and upon one of them lay a flossy spaniel, a privileged pet of his fair mistress.

The boudoir of AngÉlique was a nest of luxury and elegance. Its furnishings and adornings were of the newest Parisian style. A carpet woven in the pattern of a bed of flowers covered the floor. Vases of SÈvres and Porcelain, filled with roses and jonquils, stood on marble tables. Grand Venetian mirrors reflected the fair form of their mistress from every point of view—who contemplated herself before and behind with a feeling of perfect satisfaction and sense of triumph over every rival.

A harpsichord occupied one corner of the room, and an elaborate bookcase, well-filled with splendidly bound volumes, another.

AngÉlique had small taste for reading, yet had made some acquaintance with the literature of the day. Her natural quick parts and good taste enabled her to shine, even in literary conversation. Her bright eyes looked volumes. Her silvery laugh was wiser than the wisdom of a prÉcieuse. Her witty repartees covered acres of deficiencies with so much grace and tact that men were tempted to praise her knowledge no less than her beauty.

She had a keen eye for artistic effects. She loved painting, although her taste was sensuous and voluptuous—character is shown in the choice of pictures as much as in that of books or of companions.

There was a painting of Vanloo—a lot of full-blooded horses in a field of clover; they had broken fence, and were luxuriating in the rich, forbidden pasture. The triumph of Cleopatra over Antony, by Le Brun, was a great favorite with AngÉlique, because of a fancied, if not a real, resemblance between her own features and those of the famous Queen of Egypt. Portraits of favorite friends, one of them Le Gardeur de Repentigny, and a still more recent acquisition, that of the Intendant Bigot, adorned the walls, and among them was one distinguished for its contrast to all the rest—the likeness, in the garb of an Ursuline, of her beautiful Aunt Marie des Meloises, who, in a fit of caprice some years before, had suddenly forsaken the world of fashion, and retired to a convent.

The proud beauty threw back her thick golden tresses as she scanned her fair face and magnificent figure in the tall Venetian mirror. She drank the intoxicating cup of self-flattery to the bottom as she compared herself, feature by feature, with every beautiful woman she knew in New France. The longer she looked the more she felt the superiority of her own charms over them all. Even the portrait of her aunt, so like her in feature, so different in expression, was glanced at with something like triumph spiced with content.

“She was handsome as I!” cried AngÉlique. “She was fit to be a queen, and made herself a nun—and all for the sake of a man! I am fit to be a queen too, and the man who raises me nighest to a queen's estate gets my hand! My heart?” she paused a few moments. “Pshaw!” A slight quiver passed over her lips. “My heart must do penance for the fault of my hand!”

Petrified by vanity and saturated with ambition, AngÉlique retained under the hard crust of selfishness a solitary spark of womanly feeling. The handsome face and figure of Le Gardeur de Repentigny was her beau-ideal of manly perfection. His admiration flattered her pride. His love, for she knew infallibly, with a woman's instinct, that he loved her, touched her into a tenderness such as she felt for no man besides. It was the nearest approach to love her nature was capable of, and she used to listen to him with more than complacency, while she let her hand linger in his warm clasp while the electric fire passed from one to another and she looked into his eyes, and spoke to him in those sweet undertones that win man's hearts to woman's purposes.

She believed she loved Le Gardeur; but there was no depth in the soil where a devoted passion could take firm root. Still she was a woman keenly alive to admiration, jealous and exacting of her suitors, never willingly letting one loose from her bonds, and with warm passions and a cold heart was eager for the semblance of love, although never feeling its divine reality.

The idea of a union with Le Gardeur some day, when she should tire of the whirl of fashion, had been a pleasant fancy of AngÉlique. She had no fear of losing her power over him: she held him by the very heart-strings, and she knew it. She might procrastinate, play false and loose, drive him to the very verge of madness by her coquetries, but she knew she could draw him back, like a bird held by a silken string. She could excite, if she could not feel, the fire of a passionate love. In her heart she regarded men as beings created for her service, amazement, and sport,—to worship her beauty and adorn it with gifts. She took everything as her due, giving nothing in return. Her love was an empty shell that never held a kernel of real womanly care for any man.

Amid the sunshine of her fancied love for Le Gardeur had come a day of eclipse for him, of fresh glory for her. The arrival of the new Intendant, Bigot, changed the current of AngÉlique's ambition. His high rank, his fabulous wealth, his connections with the court, and his unmarried state, fanned into a flame the secret aspirations of the proud, ambitious girl. His wit and gallantry captivated her fancy, and her vanity was full fed by being singled out as the special object of the Intendant's admiration.

She already indulged in dreams which regarded the Intendant himself as but a stepping-stone to further greatness. Her vivid fancy, conjured up scenes of royal splendor, where, introduced by the courtly Bigot, princes and nobles would follow in her train and the smiles of majesty itself would distinguish her in the royal halls of Versailles.

AngÉlique felt she had power to accomplish all this could she but open the way. The name of Bigot she regarded as the open sesame to all greatness. “If women rule France by a right more divine than that of kings, no woman has a better right than I!” said she, gazing into the mirror before her. “The kingdom should be mine, and death to all other pretenders! And what is needed after all?” thought she, as she brushed her golden hair from her temples with a hand firm as it was beautiful. “It is but to pull down the heart of a man! I have done that many a time for my pleasure; I will now do it for my profit, and for supremacy over my jealous and envious sex!”

AngÉlique was not one to quail when she entered the battle in pursuit of any object of ambition or fancy. “I never saw the man yet,” said she, “whom I could not bring to my feet if I willed it! The Chevalier Bigot would be no exception—that is, he would be no exception”—the voice of AngÉlique fell into a low, hard monotone as she finished the sentence—“were he free from the influence of that mysterious woman at Beaumanoir, who, they say, claims the title of wife by a token which even Bigot may not disregard! Her pleading eyes may draw his compassion where they ought to excite his scorn. But men are fools to woman's faults, and are often held by the very thing women never forgive. While she crouches there like a lioness in my path the chances are I shall never be chatelaine of Beaumanoir—never, until she is gone!”

AngÉlique fell into a deep fit of musing, and murmured to herself, “I shall never reach Bigot unless she be removed—but how to remove her?”

Ay, that was the riddle of the Sphinx! AngÉlique's life, as she had projected it, depended upon the answer to that question.

She trembled with a new feeling; a shiver ran through her veins as if the cold breath of a spirit of evil had passed over her. A miner, boring down into the earth, strikes a hidden stone that brings him to a dead stand. So AngÉlique struck a hard, dark thought far down in the depths of her secret soul. She drew it to the light, and gazed on it shocked and frightened.

“I did not mean that!” cried the startled girl, crossing herself. “MÈre de Dieu! I did not conceive a wicked thought like that! I will not! I cannot contemplate that!” She shut her eyes, pressing both hands over them as if resolved not to look at the evil thought that, like a spirit of darkness, came when evoked, and would not depart when bidden. She sprang up trembling in every limb, and supporting herself against a table, seized a gilded carafe and poured out a full goblet of wine, which she drank. It revived her fainting spirit. She drank another, and stood up herself again, laughing at her own weakness.

She ran to the window, and looked out into the night. The bright stars shone overhead; the lights in the street reassured her. The people passing by and the sound of voices brought back her familiar mood. She thought no more of the temptation from which she had not prayed to be delivered, just as the daring skater forgets the depths that underlie the thin ice over which he skims, careless as a bird in the sunshine.

An hour more was struck by the loud clock of the Recollets. The drums and bugles of the garrison sounded the signal for the closing of the gates of the city and the setting of the watch for the night. Presently the heavy tramp of the patrol was heard in the street. Sober bourgeois walked briskly home, while belated soldiers ran hastily to get into their quarters ere the drums ceased beating the tattoo.

The sharp gallop of a horse clattered on the stony pavement, and stopped suddenly at the door. A light step and the clink of a scabbard rang on the steps. A familiar rap followed. AngÉlique, with the infallible intuition of a woman who recognizes the knock and footstep of her lover from ten thousand others, sprang up and met Le Gardeur de Repentigny as he entered the boudoir. She received him with warmth, even fondness, for she was proud of Le Gardeur and loved him in her secret heart beyond all the rest of her admirers.

“Welcome, Le Gardeur!” exclaimed she, giving both hands in his: “I knew you would come; you are welcome as the returned prodigal!”

“Dear AngÉlique!” repeated he, after kissing her hands with fervor, “the prodigal was sure to return, he could not live longer on the dry husks of mere recollections.”

“So he rose, and came to the house that is full and overflowing with welcome for him! It is good of you to come, Le Gardeur! why have you stayed so long away?” AngÉlique in the joy of his presence forgot for the moment her meditated infidelity.

A swift stroke of her hand swept aside her flowing skirts to clear a place for him upon the sofa, where he sat down beside her.

“This is kind of you, AngÉlique,” said he, “I did not expect so much condescension after my petulance at the Governor's ball; I was wicked that night—forgive me.”

“The fault was more mine, I doubt, Le Gardeur.” AngÉlique recollected how she had tormented him on that occasion by capricious slights, while bounteous of her smiles to others. “I was angry with you because of your too great devotion to Cecile Tourangeau.”

This was not true, but AngÉlique had no scruple to lie to a lover. She knew well that it was only from his vexation at her conduct that Le Gardeur had pretended to renew some long intermitted coquetries with the fair Cecile. “But why were you wicked at all that night?” inquired she, with a look of sudden interest, as she caught a red cast in his eye, that spoke of much dissipation. “You have been ill, Le Gardeur!” But she knew he had been drinking deep and long, to drown vexation, perhaps, over her conduct.

“I have not been ill,” replied he; “shall I tell you the truth, AngÉlique?”

“Always, and all of it! The whole truth and nothing but the truth!” Her hand rested fondly on his; no word of equivocation was possible under that mode of putting her lover to the question. “Tell me why you were wicked that night!”

“Because I loved you to madness, AngÉlique; and I saw myself thrust from the first place in your heart, and a new idol set up in my stead. That is the truth?”

“That is not the truth!” exclaimed she vehemently; “and never will be the truth if I know myself and you. But you don't know women, Le Gardeur,” added she, with a smile; “you don't know me, the one woman you ought to know better than that!”

It is easy to recover affection that is not lost. AngÉlique knew her power, and was not indisposed to excess in the exercise of it. “Will you do something for me, Le Gardeur?” asked she, tapping his fingers coquettishly with her fan.

“Will I not? Is there anything in earth, heaven, or hell, AngÉlique, I would not do for you if I only could win what I covet more than life?”

“What is that?” AngÉlique knew full well what he coveted more than life; her own heart began to beat responsively to the passion she had kindled in his. She nestled up closer to his side. “What is that, Le Gardeur?”

“Your love, AngÉlique! I have no other hope in life if I miss that! Give me your love and I will serve you with such loyalty as never man served woman with since Adam and Eve were created.”

It was a rash saying, but Le Gardeur believed it, and AngÉlique too. Still she kept her aim before her. “If I give you my love,” said she, pressing her hand through his thick locks, sending from her fingers a thousand electric fires, “will you really be my knight, my preux chevalier, to wear my colors and fight my battles with all the world?”

“I will, by all that is sacred in man or woman! Your will shall be my law, AngÉlique; your pleasure, my conscience; you shall be to me all reason and motive for my acts if you will but love me!”

“I do love you, Le Gardeur!” replied she, impetuously. She felt the vital soul of this man breathing on her cheek. She knew he spoke true, but she was incapable of measuring the height and immensity of such a passion. She accepted his love, but she could no more contain the fulness of his overflowing affection than the pitcher that is held to the fountain can contain the stream that gushes forth perpetually.

AngÉlique was ALMOST carried away from her purpose, however. Had her heart asserted its rightful supremacy—that is, had nature fashioned it larger and warmer—she had there and then thrown herself into his arms and blessed him by the consent he sought. She felt assured that here was the one man God had made for her, and she was cruelly sacrificing him to a false idol of ambition and vanity. The word he pleaded for hovered on her tongue, ready like a bird to leap down into his bosom; but she resolutely beat it back into its iron cage.

The struggle was the old one—old as the race of man. In the losing battle between the false and true, love rarely comes out of that conflict unshorn of life or limb. Untrue to him, she was true to her selfish self. The thought of the Intendant and the glories of life opening to her closed her heart, not to the pleadings of Le Gardeur,—them she loved,—but to the granting of his prayer.

The die was cast, but she still clasped hard his hand in hers, as if she could not let him go. “And will you do all you say, Le Gardeur—make my will your law, my pleasure your conscience, and let me be to you all reason and motive? Such devotion terrifies me, Le Gardeur?”

“Try me! Ask of me the hardest thing, nay, the wickedest, that imagination can conceive or hands do—and I would perform it for your sake.” Le Gardeur was getting beside himself. The magic power of those dark, flashing eyes of hers was melting all the fine gold of his nature to folly.

“Fie!” replied she, “I do not ask you to drink the sea: a small thing would content me. My love is not so exacting as that, Le Gardeur.”

“Does your brother need my aid?” asked he. “If he does, he shall have it to half my fortune for your sake!” Le Gardeur was well aware that the prodigal brother of AngÉlique was in a strait for money, as was usual with him. He had lately importuned Le Gardeur, and obtained a large sum from him.

She looked up with well-affected indignation. “How can you think such a thing, Le Gardeur? my brother was not in my thought. It was the Intendant I wished to ask you about,—you know him better than I.”

This was not true. AngÉlique had studied the Intendant in mind, person, and estate, weighing him scruple by scruple to the last attainable atom of information. Not that she had sounded the depths of Bigot's soul—there were regions of darkness in his character which no eye but God's ever penetrated. AngÉlique felt that with all her acuteness she did not comprehend the Intendant.

“You ask what I think of the Intendant?” asked he, surprised somewhat at the question.

“Yes—an odd question, is it not, Le Gardeur?” and she smiled away any surprise he experienced.

“Truly, I think him the most jovial gentleman that ever was in New France,” was the reply; “frank and open-handed to his friends, laughing and dangerous to his foes. His wit is like his wine, AngÉlique: one never tires of either, and no lavishness exhausts it. In a word, I, like the Intendant, I like his wit, his wine, his friends,—some of them, that is!—but above all, I like you, AngÉlique, and will be more his friend than ever for your sake, since I have learned his generosity towards the Chevalier des Meloises.”

The Intendant had recently bestowed a number of valuable shares in the Grand Company upon the brother of AngÉlique, making the fortune of that extravagant young nobleman.

“I am glad you will be his friend, if only for my sake,” added she, coquettishly. “But some great friends of yours like him not. Your sweet sister AmÉlie shrank like a sensitive plant at the mention of his name, and the Lady de Tilly put on her gravest look to-day when I spoke of the Chevalier Bigot.”

Le Gardeur gave AngÉlique an equivocal look at mention of his sister. “My sister AmÉlie is an angel in the flesh,” said he. “A man need be little less than divine to meet her full approval; and my good aunt has heard something of the genial life of the Intendant. One may excuse a reproving shake of her noble head.”

“Colonel Philibert too! he shares in the sentiments of your aunt and sister, to say nothing of the standing hostility of his father, the Bourgeois,” continued AngÉlique, provoked at Le Gardeur's want of adhesion.

“Pierre Philibert! He may not like the Intendant: he has reason for not doing so; but I stake my life upon his honor—he will never be unjust towards the Intendant or any man.” Le Gardeur could not be drawn into a censure of his friend.

AngÉlique shielded adroitly the stiletto of innuendo she had drawn. “You say right,” said she, craftily; “Pierre Philibert is a gentleman worthy of your regard. I confess I have seen no handsomer man in New France. I have been dreaming of one like him all my life! What a pity I saw you first, Le Gardeur!” added she, pulling him by the hair.

“I doubt you would throw me to the fishes were Pierre my rival, AngÉlique,” replied he, merrily; “but I am in no danger: Pierre's affections are, I fancy, forestalled in a quarter where I need not be jealous of his success.”

“I shall at any rate not be jealous of your sister, Le Gardeur,” said AngÉlique, raising her face to his, suffused with a blush; “if I do not give you the love you ask for it is because you have it already; but ask no more at present from me—this, at least, is yours,” said she, kissing him twice, without prudery or hesitation.

That kiss from those adored lips sealed his fate. It was the first—better it had been the last, better he had never been born than have drank the poison of her lips.

“Now answer me my questions, Le Gardeur,” added she, after a pause of soft blandishments.

Le Gardeur felt her fingers playing with his hair, as, like Delilah, she cut off the seven locks of his strength.

“There is a lady at Beaumanoir; tell me who and what she is, Le Gardeur,” said she.

He would not have hesitated to betray the gate of Heaven at her prayer; but, as it happened, Le Gardeur could not give her the special information she wanted as to the particular relation in which that lady stood to the Intendant. AngÉlique with wonderful coolness talked away, and laughed at the idea of the Intendant's gallantry. But she could get no confirmation of her suspicions from Le Gardeur. Her inquiry was for the present a failure, but she made Le Gardeur promise to learn what he could and tell her the result of his inquiries.

They sat long conversing together, until the bell of the Recollets sounded the hour of midnight. AngÉlique looked in the face of Le Gardeur with a meaning smile, as she counted each stroke with her dainty finger on his cheek. When finished, she sprang up and looked out of the lattice at the summer night.

The stars were twinkling like living things. Charles's Wain lay inverted in the northern horizon; Bootes had driven his sparkling herd down the slope of the western sky. A few thick tresses of her golden hair hung negligently over her bosom and shoulders. She placed her arm in Le Gardeur's, hanging heavily upon him as she directed his eyes to the starry heavens. The selfish schemes she carried in her bosom dropped for a moment to the ground. Her feet seemed to trample them into the dust, while she half resolved to be to this man all that he believed her to be, a true and devoted woman.

“Read my destiny, Le Gardeur,” said she, earnestly. “You are a Seminarist. They say the wise fathers of the Seminary study deeply the science of the stars, and the students all become adepts in it.”

“Would that my starry heaven were more propitious, AngÉlique,” replied he, gaily kissing her eyes. “I care not for other skies than these! My fate and fortune are here.”

Her bosom heaved with mingled passions. The word of hope and the word of denial struggled on her lips for mastery. Her blood throbbed quicker than the beat of the golden pendule on the marble table; but, like a bird, the good impulse again escaped her grasp.

“Look, Le Gardeur,” said she. Her delicate finger pointed at Perseus, who was ascending the eastern heavens: “there is my star. MÈre Malheur,—you know her,—she once said to me that that was my natal star, which would rule my life.”

Like all whose passions pilot them, AngÉlique believed in destiny.

Le Gardeur had sipped a few drops of the cup of astrology from the venerable Professor Vallier. AngÉlique's finger pointed to the star Algol—that strange, mutable star that changes from bright to dark with the hours, and which some believe changes men's hearts to stone.

“MÈre Malheur lied!” exclaimed he, placing his arm round her, as if to protect her from the baleful influence. “That cursed star never presided over your birth, AngÉlique! That is the demon star Algol.”

AngÉlique shuddered, and pressed still closer to him, as if in fear.

“MÈre Malheur would not tell me the meaning of that star, but bade me, if a saint, to watch and wait; if a sinner, to watch and pray. What means Algol, Le Gardeur?” she half faltered.

“Nothing for you, love. A fig for all the stars in the sky! Your bright eyes outshine them all in radiance, and overpower them in influence. All the music of the spheres is to me discord compared with the voice of AngÉlique des Meloises, whom alone I love!”

As he spoke a strain of heavenly harmony arose from the chapel of the Convent of the Ursulines, where they were celebrating midnight service for the safety of New France. Amid the sweet voices that floated up on the notes of the pealing organ was clearly distinguished that of MÈre St. Borgia, the aunt of AngÉlique, who led the choir of nuns. In trills and cadences of divine melody the voice of MÈre St. Borgia rose higher and higher, like a spirit mounting the skies. The words were indistinct, but AngÉlique knew them by heart. She had visited her aunt in the Convent, and had learned the new hymn composed by her for the solemn occasion.

As they listened with quiet awe to the supplicating strain, AngÉlique repeated to Le Gardeur the words of the hymn as it was sung by the choir of nuns:

The hymn ceased. Both stood mute until the watchman cried the hour in the silent street.

“God bless their holy prayers, and good-night and God bless you, AngÉlique!” said Le Gardeur, kissing her. He departed suddenly, leaving a gift in the hand of Lizette, who courtesied low to him with a smile of pleasure as he passed out, while AngÉlique leaned out of the window listening to his horse's hoofs until the last tap of them died away on the stony pavement.

She threw herself upon her couch and wept silently. The soft music had touched her feelings. Le Gardeur's love was like a load of gold, crushing her with its weight. She could neither carry it onward nor throw it off. She fell at length into a slumber filled with troubled dreams. She was in a sandy wilderness, carrying a pitcher of clear, cold water, and though dying of thirst she would not drink, but perversely poured it upon the ground. She was falling down into unfathomable abysses and pushed aside the only hand stretched out to save her. She was drowning in deep water and she saw Le Gardeur buffeting the waves to rescue her but she wrenched herself out of his grasp. She would not be saved, and was lost! Her couch was surrounded with indefinite shapes of embryo evil.

She fell asleep at last. When she awoke the sun was pouring in her windows. A fresh breeze shook the trees. The birds sang gaily in the garden. The street was alive and stirring with people.

It was broad day. AngÉlique des Meloises was herself again. Her day-dream of ambition resumed its power. Her night-dream of love was over. Her fears vanished, her hopes were all alive, and she began to prepare for a possible morning call from the Chevalier Bigot.