eard 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, Francois 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 Angelique 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, Angelique
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 Angelique'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 Angelique 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 Angelique. How far he opened the deta