now you may go to Lizette; she will attend to you. But
REMEMBER!"

The frightened girl did not wait for another command to go. Angelique
held up her finger, which to Fanchon looked terrible as a poniard. She
hurried down to the servants' hall with a secret held fast between her
teeth for once in her life; and she trembled at the very thought of ever
letting it escape.

Angelique sat with her hands on her temples, staring upon the fire that
flared and flickered in the deep fireplace. She had seen a wild, wicked
vision there once before. It came again, as things evil never fail to
come again at our bidding. Good may delay, but evil never waits. The red
fire turned itself into shapes of lurid dens and caverns, changing from
horror to horror until her creative fancy formed them into the secret
chamber of Beaumanoir with its one fair, solitary inmate, her rival for
the hand of the Intendant,--her fortunate rival, if she might believe
the letter brought to her so strangely. Angelique looked fiercely at the
fragments of it lying upon the carpet, and wished she had not destroyed
it; but every word of it was stamped upon her memory, as if branded with
a hot iron.

"I see it all, now!" exclaimed she--"Bigot's falseness, and her
shameless effrontery in seeking him in his very house. But it shall not
be!" Angelique's voice was like the cry of a wounded panther tearing at
the arrow which has pierced his flank. "Is Angelique des Meloises to
be humiliated by that woman? Never! But my bright dreams will have no
fulfilment so long as she lives at Beaumanoir,--so long as she lives
anywhere!"

She sat still for a while, gazing into the fire; and the secret chamber
of Beaumanoir again formed itself before her vision. She sprang up,
touched by the hand of her good angel perhaps, and for the last time.
"Satan whispered it again in my ear!" cried she. "Ste. Marie! I am not
so wicked as that! Last night the thought came to me in the dark--I
shook it off at dawn of day. To-night it comes again,--and I let it
touch me like a lover, and I neither withdraw my hand nor tremble!
To-morrow it will return for the last time and stay with me,--and I
shall let it sleep on my pillow! The babe of sin will have been born and
waxed to a full demon, and I shall yield myself up to his embraces! O
Bigot, Bigot! what have you not done? C'est la faute a vous! C'est la
faute a vous!" She repeated this exclamation several times, as if by
accusing Bigot she exc