In vain she reverted to the subject of matrimony, in apparent jest but secret earnest. The Intendant, quick-witted as herself, would accept the challenge, talk with her and caracole on the topic which she had caparisoned so gaily for him, and amid compliments and pleasantries, ride away from the point, she knew not whither! Then Angelique would be angry after his departure, and swear,--she could swear shockingly for a lady when she was angry!--and vow she would marry Le Gardeur after all; but her pride was stung, not her love. No man had ever defeated her when she chose to subdue him, neither should this proud Intendant! So Angelique collected her scattered forces again, and laid closer siege to Bigot than ever.

The great ball at the Palais had been the object of absorbing interest to the fashionable society of the Capital for many weeks. It came on at last, turning the heads of half the city with its splendor.

Angelique shone the acknowledged queen of the Intendant's ball. Her natural grace and beauty, set off by the exquisite taste and richness of her attire, threw into eclipse the fairest of her rivals. If there was one present who, in admiration of her own charms, claimed for herself the first place, she freely conceded to Angelique the second. But Angelique feared no rival there. Her only fear was at Beaumanoir. She was profoundly conscious of her own superiority to all present, while she relished the envy and jealousy which it created. She cared but little what the women thought of her, and boldly challenging the homage of the men, obtained it as her rightful due.

Still, under the gay smiles and lively badinage which she showered on all around as she moved through the brilliant throng, Angelique felt a bitter spirit of discontent rankling in her bosom. She was angry, and she knew why, and still more angry because upon herself lay the blame!

Not that she blamed herself for having rejected Le Gardeur: she had done that deliberately and for a price; but the price was not yet paid, and she had, sometimes, qualms of doubt whether it would ever be paid!

She who had had her own way with all men, now encountered a man who spoke and looked like one who had had his own way with all women, and who meant to have his own way with her!

She gazed often upon the face of Bigot, and the more she looked the more inscrutable it appeared to her. She tried to sound the depths of his thoughts, but her inquiry was like the dropping of a stone into the bottomless pit of that deep cavern of the dark and bloody ground talked of by adventurous voyageurs from the Far West.

That Bigot admired her beyond all other women at the ball, was visible enough from the marked attention which he lavished upon her and the courtly flatteries that flowed like honey from his lips. She also read her preeminence in his favor from the jealous eyes of a host of rivals who watched her every movement. But Angelique felt that the admiration of the Intendant was not of that kind which had driven so many men mad for her sake. She knew Bigot would never go mad for her, much as he was fascinated! and why? why?

Angelique, while listening to his honeyed flatteries as he led her gaily through the ballroom, asked herself again and again, why did he carefully avoid the one topic that filled her thoughts, or spoke of it only in his mocking manner, which tortured her to madness with doubt and perplexity?

As she leaned on the arm of the courtly Intendant, laughing like one possessed with the very spirit of gaiety at his sallies and jests, her mind was torn with bitter comparisons as she remembered Le Gardeur, his handsome face and his transparent admiration, so full of love and ready for any sacrifice for her sake,--and she had cast it all away for this inscrutable voluptuary, a man who had no respect for women, but who admired her person, condescended to be pleased with it, and affected to be caught by the lures she held out to him, but which she felt would be of no more avail to hold him fast than the threads which a spider throws from bush to bush on a summer morn will hold fast a bird which flies athwart them!

The gayest of the gay to all outward appearance, Angelique missed sorely the presence of Le Gardeur, and she resented his absence from the ball as a slight and a wrong to her sovereignty, which never released a lover from his allegiance.

The fair demoiselles at the ball, less resolutely ambitious than Angelique, found by degrees, in the devotion of other cavaliers, ample compensation for only so much of the Intendant's favor as he liberally bestowed on all the sex; but that did not content Angelique: she looked with sharpest eyes of inquisition upon the bright glances which now and then shot across the room where she sat by the side of Bigot, apparently steeped in happiness, but with a serpent biting at her heart, for she felt that Bigot was really unimpressible as a stone under her most subtle manipulation.

Her thoughts ran in a round of ceaseless repetition of the question: "Why can I not subdue Francois Bigot as I have subdued every other man who exposed his weak side to my power?" and Angelique pressed her foot hard upon the floor as the answer returned ever the same: "The heart of the Intendant is away at Beaumanoir! That pale, pensive lady" (Angelique used a more coarse and emphatic word) "stands between him and me like a spectre as she is, and obstructs the path I have sacrificed so much to enter!"

"I cannot endure the heat of the ballroom, Bigot!" said Angelique; "I will dance no more to-night! I would rather sit and catch fireflies on the terrace than chase forever without overtaking it the bird that has escaped from my bosom!"

The Intendant, ever attentive to her wishes, offered his arm to lead her into the pleached walks of the illuminated garden. Angelique rose, gathered up her rich train, and with an air of royal coquetry took his arm and accompanied the Intendant on a promenade down the grand alley of roses.

"What favorite bird has escaped from your bosom, Angelique?" asked the Intendant, who had, however, a shrewd guess of the meaning of her metaphor.

"The pleasure I had in anticipation of this ball! The bird has flown, I know not where or how. I have no pleasure here at all!" exclaimed she, petulantly, although she knew the ball had been really got up mainly for her own pleasure.

"And yet Momus himself might have been your father, and Euphrosyne your mother, Angelique," replied Bigot, "to judge by your gaiety to-night.

If you have no pleasure, it is because you have given it all away to others! But I have caught the bird you lost, let me restore it to your bosom pray!" He laid his hand lightly and caressingly upon her arm.

Her bosom was beating wildly; she removed his hand, and held it firmly grasped in her own.

"Chevalier!" said she, "the pleasure of a king is in the loyalty of his subjects, the pleasure of a woman in the fidelity of her lover!" She was going to say more, but stopped. But she gave him a glance which insinuated more than all she left unsaid.

Bigot smiled to himself. "Angelique is jealous!" thought he, but he only remarked, "That is an aphorism which I believe with all my heart! If the pleasure of a woman be in the fidelity of her lover, I know no one who should be more happy than Angelique des Meloises! No lady in New France has a right to claim greater devotion from a lover, and no one receives it!"

"But I have no faith in the fidelity of my lover! and I am not happy, Chevalier! far from it!" replied she, with one of those impulsive speeches that seemed frankness itself, but in this woman were artful to a degree.

"Why so?" replied he; "pleasure will never leave you, Angelique, unless you wilfully chase it away from your side! All women envy your beauty, all men struggle to obtain your smiles. For myself, I would gather all the joys and treasures of the world, and lay them at your feet, would you let me!

"I do not hinder you, Chevalier!" she replied, with a laugh of incredulity, "but you do not do it! It is only your politeness to say that. I have told you that the pleasure of a woman is in the fidelity of her lover; tell me now, Chevalier, what is the highest pleasure of a man?"

"The beauty and condescension of his mistress,--at least, I know none greater." Bigot looked at her as if his speech ought to receive acknowledgement on the spot.

"And it is your politeness to say that, also, Chevalier!" replied she very coolly.

"I wish I could say of your condescension, Angelique, what I have said of your beauty: Francois Bigot would then feel the highest pleasure of a man." The Intendant only half knew the woman he was seeking to deceive.

She got angry.

Angelique looked up with a scornful flash. "My condescension, Chevalier?

to what have I not condescended on the faith of your solemn promise that the lady of Beaumanoir should not remain under your roof? She is still there, Chevalier, in spite of your promise!"

Bigot was on the point of denying the fact, but there was sharpness in Angelique's tone, and clearness of all doubt in her eyes. He saw he would gain nothing by denial.

"She knows the whole secret, I do believe!" muttered he. "Argus with his hundred eyes was a blind man compared to a woman's two eyes sharpened by jealousy."

"The lady of Beaumanoir accuses me of no sin that I repent of!" replied he. "True! I promised to send her away, and so I will; but she is a woman, a lady, who has claims upon me for gentle usage. If it were your case, Angelique--"

Angelique quitted his arm and stood confronting him, flaming with indignation. She did not let him finish his sentence: "If it were my case, Bigot! as if that could ever be my case, and you alive to speak of it!"

Bigot stepped backwards. He was not sure but a poniard glittered in the clenched hand of Angelique. It was but the flash of her diamond rings as she lifted it suddenly. She almost struck him.

"Do not blame me for infidelities committed before I knew you, Angelique!" said he, seizing her hand, which he held forcibly in his, in spite of her efforts to wrench it away.

"It is my nature to worship beauty at every shrine. I have ever done so until I found the concentration of all my divinities in you. I could not, if I would, be unfaithful to you, Angelique des Meloises!" Bigot was a firm believer in the classical faith that Jove laughs at lovers'

perjuries.

"You mock me, Bigot!" replied she. "You are the only man who has ever dared to do so twice."

"When did I mock you twice, Angelique?" asked he, with an air of injured innocence.

"Now! and when you pledged yourself to remove the lady of Beaumanoir from your house! I admire your courage, Bigot, in playing false with me and still hoping to win! But never speak to me more of love while that pale spectre haunts the secret chambers of the Chateau!"

"She shall be removed, Angelique, since you insist upon it," replied he, secretly irritated; "but where is the harm? I pledge my faith she shall not stand in the way of my love for you."

"Better she were dead than do so!" whispered Angelique to herself. "It is my due, Bigot!" replied she aloud, "you know what I have given up for your sake!"

"Yes! I know you have banished Le Gardeur de Repentigny when it had been better to keep him securely in the ranks of the Grand Company. Why did you refuse to marry him, Angelique?"

The question fairly choked her with anger. "Why did I refuse to marry him? Francois Bigot! Do you ask me seriously that question? Did you not tell me of your own love, and all but offer me your hand, giving me to understand--miserable sinner that you are, or as you think me to be--that you pledged your own faith to me, as first in your choice, and I have done that which I had better have been dead and buried with the heaviest pyramid of Egypt on top of me, buried without hope of resurrection, than have done?"

Bigot, accustomed as he was to woman's upbraidings, scarcely knew what to reply to this passionate outburst. He had spoken to her words of love, plenty of them, but the idea of marriage had not flashed across his mind for a moment,--not a word of that had escaped his lips. He had as little guessed the height of Angelique's ambition as she the depths of his craft and wickedness, and yet there was a wonderful similarity between the characters of both,--the same bold, defiant spirit, the same inordinate ambition, the same void of principle in selecting means to ends,--only the one fascinated with the lures of love, the other by the charms of wit, the temptations of money, or effected his purposes by the rough application of force.

"You call me rightly a miserable sinner," said he, half smiling, as one not very miserable although a sinner. "If love of fair women be a sin, I am one of the greatest of sinners; and in your fair presence, Angelique, I am sinning at this moment enough to sink a shipload of saints and angels!"

"You have sunk me in my own and the world's estimation, if you mean what you say, Bigot!" replied she, unconsciously tearing in strips the fan she held in her hand. "You love all women too well ever to be capable of fixing your heart upon one!" A tear, of vexation perhaps, stood in her angry eye as she said this, and her cheek twitched with fierce emotion.

"Come, Angelique!" said he, soothingly, "some of our guests have entered this alley. Let us walk down to the terrace. The moon is shining bright over the broad river, and I will swear to you by St. Picaut, my patron, whom I never deceive, that my love for all womankind has not hindered me from fixing my supreme affection upon you."

Angelique allowed him to press her hand, which he did with fervor. She almost believed his words. She could scarcely imagine another woman seriously preferred to herself, when she chose to flatter a man with a belief of her own preference for him.

They walked down a long alley brilliantly illuminated with lamps of Bohemian glass, which shone like the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds which grew upon the trees in the garden of Aladdin.

At every angle of the geometrically-cut paths of hard-beaten sea-shells, white as snow, stood the statue of a faun, a nymph, or dryad, in Parian marble, holding a torch, which illuminated a great vase running over with fresh, blooming flowers, presenting a vista of royal magnificence which bore testimony to the wealth and splendid tastes of the Intendant.