"Well, Louise," interrupted Angelique impatiently, "but do you not see the Sieur La Force is getting tired of holding you up so long with his hand? For heaven's sake, get down!"

"I want to punish him for going with you, and not waiting for me," was the cool whisper of Louise. "But you will ask me, Angelique, to the wedding, will you not? If you do not," continued she, "I shall die!"

and delaying her descent as long as possible, she commenced a new topic concerning the hat worn by Angelique.

"Mischief that you are, get down! The Sieur La Force is my cavalier for the day, and you shall not impose on his gallantry that way! He is ready to drop," whispered Angelique.

"One word more, Angelique." Louise was delighted to feel the hand of La Force tremble more and more under her foot.

"No, not a word! Get down!"

"Kiss me then, and good-by, cross thing that you are! Do not keep him all day, or all the class besides myself will be jealous," replied Louise, not offering to get down.

Angelique had no mind to allow her cavalier to be made a horse-block of for anybody but herself. She jerked the bridle, and making her horse suddenly pirouette, compelled Louise to jump down. The mischievous little fairy turned her bright laughing eyes full upon La Force and thanked him for his great courtesy, and with a significant gesture--as much as to say he was at liberty now to escort Angelique, having done penance for the same--rejoined her expectant companions, who had laughed heartily at her manoeuvre.

"She paints!" was Louise's emphatic whisper to her companions, loud enough to be heard by La Force, for whom the remark was partly intended.

"She paints! and I saw in her eyes that she has not slept all night! She is in love! and I do believe it is true she is to marry the Intendant!"

This was delicious news to the class of Louises, who laughed out like a chime of silver bells as they mischievously bade La Force and Angelique bon voyage, and passed down the Place d'Armes in search of fresh adventures to fill their budgets of fun--budgets which, on their return to the Convent, they would open under the very noses of the good nuns (who were not so blind as they seemed, however), and regale all their companions with a spicy treat, in response to the universal question ever put to all who had been out in the city, "What is the news?"

La Force, compliant as wax to every caprice of Angelique, was secretly fuming at the trick played upon him by the Mischief of the Convent,--as he called Louise Roy,--for which he resolved to be revenged, even if he had to marry her. He and Angelique rode down the busy streets, receiving salutations on every hand. In the great square of the market-place Angelique pulled up in front of the Cathedral.

Why she stopped there would have puzzled herself to explain. It was not to worship, not to repent of her heinous sin: she neither repented nor desired to repent. But it seemed pleasant to play at repentance and put on imaginary sackcloth.

Angelique's brief contact with the fresh, sunny nature of Louise Roy had sensibly raised her spirits. It lifted the cloud from her brow, and made her feel more like her former self. The story, told half in jest by Louise, that she was to marry the Intendant, flattered her vanity and raised her hopes to the utmost. She liked the city to talk of her in connection with the Intendant.

The image of Beaumanoir grew fainter and fainter as she knelt down upon the floor, not to ask pardon for her sin, but to pray for immunity for herself and the speedy realization of the great object of her ambition and her crime!

The pealing of the organ, rising and falling in waves of harmony, the chanting of choristers, and the voice of the celebrant during the service in honor of St. Michael and all the angels, touched her sensuous nature, but failed to touch her conscience.

A crowd of worshippers were kneeling upon the floor of the Cathedral, unobstructed in those days by seats and pews, except on one side, where rose the stately bancs of the Governor and the Intendant, on either side of which stood a sentry with ported arms, and overhead upon the wall blazed the royal escutcheons of France.

Angelique, whose eyes roved incessantly about the church, turned them often towards the gorgeous banc of the Intendant, and the thought intruded itself to the exclusion of her prayers, "When shall I sit there, with all these proud ladies forgetting their devotions through envy of my good fortune?"

Bigot did not appear in his place at church to-day. He was too profoundly agitated and sick, and lay on his bed till evening, revolving in his astute mind schemes of vengeance possible and impossible, to be carried out should his suspicions of Angelique become certainties of knowledge and fact. His own safety was at stake. The thought that he had been outwitted by the beautiful, designing, heartless girl, the reflection that he dare not turn to the right hand nor to the left to inquire into this horrid assassination, which, if discovered, would be laid wholly to his own charge, drove him to the verge of distraction.

The Governor and his friend Peter Kalm occupied the royal banc. Lutheran as he was, Peter Kalm was too philosophical and perhaps too faithful a follower of Christ to consider religion as a matter of mere opinion or of form rather than of humble dependence upon God, the Father of all, with faith in Christ and the conscientious striving to love God and his neighbor.

A short distance from Angelique, two ladies in long black robes, and evidently of rank, were kneeling with downcast faces, and hands clasped over their bosoms, in a devout attitude of prayer and supplication.

Angelique's keen eye, which nothing escaped, needed not a second glance to recognize the unmistakable grace of Amelie de Repentigny and the nobility of the Lady de Tilly.

She started at sight of these relatives of Le Gardeur's, but did not wonder at their presence, for she already knew that they had returned to the city immediately after the abduction of Le Gardeur by the Chevalier de Pean.

Startled, frightened, and despairing, with aching hearts but unimpaired love, Amelie and the Lady de Tilly had followed Le Gardeur and reoccupied their stately house in the city, resolved to leave no means untried, no friends unsolicited, no prayers unuttered to rescue him from the gulf of perdition into which he had again so madly plunged.

Within an hour after her return, Amelie, accompanied by Pierre Philibert, had gone to the Palace to seek an interview with her brother.

They were rudely denied. "He was playing a game of piquet for the championship of the Palace with the Chevalier de Pean, and could not come if St. Peter, let alone Pierre Philibert, stood at the gate knocking!"

This reply had passed through the impure lips of the Sieur de Lantagnac before it reached Amelie and Pierre. They did not believe it came from their brother. They left the Palace with heavy hearts, after long and vainly seeking an interview, Philibert resolving to appeal to the Intendant himself and call him to account at the sword's point, if need be, for the evident plot in the Palace to detain Le Gardeur from his friends.

Amelie, dreading some such resolution on the part of Pierre, went back next day alone to the Palace to try once more to see Le Gardeur.

She was agitated and in tears at the fate of her brother. She was anxious over the evident danger which Pierre seemed to court, for his sake and--she would not hide the truth from herself--for her own sake too; and yet she would not forbid him. She felt her own noble blood stirred within her to the point that she wished herself a man to be able to walk sword in hand into the Palace and confront the herd of revellers who she believed had plotted the ruin of her brother.

She was proud of Pierre, while she trembled at the resolution which she read in his countenance of demanding as a soldier, and not as a suppliant, the restoration of Le Gardeur to his family.

Amelie's second visit to the Palace had been as fruitless as her first.

She was denied admittance, with the profoundest regrets on the part of De Pean, who met her at the door and strove to exculpate himself from the accusation of having persuaded Le Gardeur to depart from Tilly, and of keeping him in the Palace against the prayers of his friends.

De Pean remembered his presumption as well as his rejection by Amelie at Tilly, and while his tongue ran smooth as oil in polite regrets that Le Gardeur had resolved not to see his sister to-day, her evident distress filled him with joy, which he rolled under his tongue as the most delicate morsel of revenge he had ever tasted.

Bowing with well-affected politeness, De Pean attended her to her carriage, and having seen her depart in tears, returned laughing into the Palace, remarking, as he mimicked the weeping countenance of Amelie, that "the Honnetes Gens had learned it was a serious matter to come to the burial of the virtues of a young gentleman like Le Gardeur de Repentigny."

On her return home Amelie threw herself on the neck of her aunt, repeating in broken accents, "My poor Le Gardeur! my brother! He refuses to see me, aunt! He is lost and ruined in that den of all iniquity and falsehood!"

"Be composed, Amelie," replied the Lady de Tilly; "I know it is hard to bear, but perhaps Le Gardeur did not send that message to you. The men about him are capable of deceiving you to an extent you have no conception of,--you who know so little of the world's baseness."

"O aunt, it is true! He sent me this dreadful thing; I took it, for it bears the handwriting of my brother."

She held in her hand a card, one of a pack. It was the death-card of superstitious lookers into futurity. Had he selected it because it bore that reputation, or was it by chance?

On the back of it he had written, or scrawled in a trembling hand, yet plainly, the words: "Return home, Amelie. I will not see you. I have lost the game of life and won the card you see. Return home, dear sister, and forget your unworthy and ruined brother, Le Gardeur."

Lady de Tilly took the card, and read and re-read it, trying to find a meaning it did not contain, and trying not to find the sad meaning it did contain.

She comforted Amelie as best she could, while needing strength herself to bear the bitter cross laid upon them both, in the sudden blighting of that noble life of which they had been so proud.

She took Amelie in her arms, mingling her own tears with hers, and bidding her not despair. "A sister's love," said she, "never forgets, never wearies, never despairs." They had friends too powerful to be withstood, even by Bigot, and the Intendant would be compelled to loosen his hold upon Le Gardeur. She would rely upon the inherent nobleness of the nature of Le Gardeur himself to wash itself pure of all stain, could they only withdraw him from the seductions of the Palace. "We will win him from them by counter charms, Amelie, and it will be seen that virtue is stronger than vice to conquer at last the heart of Le Gardeur."

"Alas, aunt!" replied the poor girl, her eyes suffused with tears, "neither friend nor foe will avail to turn him from the way he has resolved to go. He is desperate, and rushes with open eyes upon his ruin. We know the reason of it all. There is but one who could have saved Le Gardeur if she would. She is utterly unworthy of my brother, but I feel now it were better Le Gardeur had married even her than that he should be utterly lost to himself and us all. I will see Angelique des Meloises myself. It was her summons brought him back to the city.

She alone can withdraw him from the vile companionship of Bigot and his associates at the Palace."

Angelique had been duly informed of the return of Amelie to the city, and of her fruitless visits to the Palace to see her brother.

It was no pleasure, but a source of angry disappointment to Angelique that Le Gardeur, in despair of making her his wife, refused to devote himself to her as her lover. He was running wild to destruction, instead of letting her win the husband she aspired to, and retain at the same time the gallant she loved and was not willing to forego.

She had seen him at the first sober moment after his return from Tilly, in obedience to her summons. She had permitted him to pour out again his passion at her feet. She had yielded to his kisses when he claimed her heart and hand, and had not refused to own the mutual flame that covered her cheek with a blush at her own falseness. But driven to the wall by his impetuosity, she had at last killed his reviving hopes by her repetition of the fatal words, "I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you!"

Angelique was seized with a sudden impulse to withdraw from the presence of Amelie in the Cathedral before being discovered by her. She was half afraid that her former school companion would speak to her on the subject of Le Gardeur. She could not brazen it out with Amelie, who knew her too well, and if she could, she would gladly avoid the angry flash of those dark, pure eyes.

The organ was pealing the last notes of the Doxology, and the voices of the choristers seemed to reecho from the depths of eternity the words, "in saecula saeculorum," when Angelique rose up suddenly to leave the church.

Her irreverent haste caused those about her to turn their heads at the slight confusion she made, Amelie among the rest, who recognized at once the countenance of Angelique, somewhat flushed and irritated, as she strove vainly, with the help of La Force, to get out of the throng of kneeling people who covered the broad floor of the Cathedral.

Amelie deemed it a fortunate chance to meet Angelique so opportunely--just when her desire to do so was strongest. She caught her eye, and made her a quick sign to stay, and approaching her, seized her hands in her old, affectionate way.

"Wait a few moments, Angelique," said she, "until the people depart. I want to speak to you alone. I am so fortunate to find you here."