"Well, Dame, some turn to the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in his eyes as herself!"

"Nor deserves to be, master! Theirs is no ordinary affection. If love be the fulfilling of the law, all law is fulfilled in these two, for never did the elements of happiness mingle more sweetly in the soul of a man and a woman than in Pierre and Amelie!"

"It will restore your youth, dame, to live with Pierre and Amelie,"

replied the Bourgeois. "Amelie insists on it, not because of Pierre, she says, but for your own sake. She was moved to tears one day, dame, when she made me relate your story."

Dame Rochelle put on her spectacles to cover her eyes, which were fast filling, as she glanced down on the black robe she wore, remembering for whom she wore it.

"Thanks, master. It would be a blessed thing to end the remaining days of my mourning in the house of Pierre and Amelie, but my quiet mood suits better the house of my master, who has also had his heart saddened by a long, long day of darkness and regret."

"Yes, dame, but a bright sunset, I trust, awaits it now. The descending shadow of the dial goes back a pace on the fortunes of my house! I hope to welcome my few remaining years with a gayer aspect and a lighter heart than I have felt since we were driven from France. What would you say to see us all reunited once more in our old Norman home?"

The dame gave a great start, and clasped her thin hands.

"What would I say, master? Oh, to return to France, and be buried in the green valley of the Cote d'Or by the side of him, were next to rising in the resurrection of the just at the last day."

The Bourgeois knew well whom she meant by "him." He reverenced her feeling, but continued the topic of a return to France.

"Well, dame, I will do for Pierre what I would not do for myself. I shall repurchase the old chateau, and use every influence at my command to prevail on the King to restore to Pierre the honors of his ancestors.

Will not that be a glorious end to the career of the Bourgeois Philibert?"

"Yes, master, but it may not end there for you. I hear from my quiet window many things spoken in the street below. Men love you so, and need you so, that they will not spare any supplication to bid you stay in the Colony; and you will stay and die where you have lived so many years, under the shadow of the Golden Dog. Some men hate you, too, because you love justice and stand up for the right. I have a request to make, dear master."

"What is that, dame?" asked he kindly, prepared to grant any request of hers.

"Do not go to the market to-morrow," replied she earnestly.

The Bourgeois glanced sharply at the dame, who continued to ply her needles. Her eyes were half closed in a semi-trance, their lids trembling with nervous excitement. One of her moods, rare of late, was upon her, and she continued:

"Oh, my dear master! you will never go to France; but Pierre shall inherit the honors of the house of Philibert!"

The Bourgeois looked up contentedly. He respected, without putting entire faith in Dame Rochelle's inspirations. "I shall be resigned,"

he said, "not to see France again, if the King's Majesty makes it a condition that he restore to Pierre the dignity, while I give him back the domain of his fathers."

Dame Rochelle clasped her hands hard together and sighed. She spake not, but her lips moved in prayer as if deprecating some danger, or combating some presentiment of evil.

The Bourgeois watched her narrowly. Her moods of devout contemplation sometimes perplexed his clear worldly wisdom. He could scarcely believe that her intuitions were other than the natural result of a wonderfully sensitive and apprehensive nature; still, in his experience he had found that her fancies, if not supernatural, were not unworthy of regard as the sublimation of reason by intellectual processes of which the possessor was unconscious.

"You again see trouble in store for me, dame," said he smiling; "but a merchant of New France setting at defiance the decrees of the Royal Intendant, an exile seeking from the King the restoration of the lordship of Philibert, may well have trouble on his hands."

"Yes, master, but as yet I only see trouble like a misty cloud which as yet has neither form nor color of its own, but only reflects red rays as of a setting sun. No voice from its midst tells me its meaning; I thank God for that. I like not to anticipate evil that may not be averted!"

"Whom does it touch, Pierre or Amelie, me, or all of us?" asked the Bourgeois.

"All of us, master? How could any misfortune do other than concern us all? What it means, I know not. It is now like the wheel seen by the Prophet, full of eyes within and without, like God's providence looking for his elect."

"And finding them?"

"Not yet, master, but ere long,--finding all ere long," replied she in a dreamy manner. "But go not to the market to-morrow."

"These are strange fancies of yours, Dame Rochelle. Why caution me against the market to-morrow? It is the day of St. Martin; the poor will expect me; if I go not, many will return empty away."

"They are not wholly fancies, master. Two gentlemen of the Palace passed to-day, and looking up at the tablet, one wagered the other on the battle to-morrow between Cerberus and the Golden Dog. I have not forgotten wholly my early lessons in classical lore," added the dame.

"Nor I, dame. I comprehend the allusion, but it will not keep me from the market! I will be watchful, however, for I know that the malice of my enemies is at this time greater than ever before."

"Let Pierre go with you, and you will be safe," said the dame half imploringly.

The Bourgeois laughed at the suggestion and began good-humoredly to rally her on her curious gift and on the inconvenience of having a prophetess in his house to anticipate the evil day.

Dame Rochelle would not say more. She knew that to express her fears more distinctly would only harden the resolution of the Bourgeois. His natural courage would make him court the special danger he ought to avoid.

"Master," said she, suddenly casting her eyes in the street, "there rides past one of the gentlemen who wagered on the battle between Cerberus and the Golden Dog."

The Bourgeois had sufficient curiosity to look out. He recognized the Chevalier de Pean, and tranquilly resumed his seat with the remark that "that was truly one of the heads of Cerberus which guards the Friponne, a fellow who wore the collar of the Intendant and was worthy of it. The Golden Dog had nothing to fear from him."

Dame Rochelle, full of her own thoughts, followed with her eyes the retreating figure of the Chevalier de Pean, whom she lost sight of at the first turn, as he rode rapidly to the house of Angelique des Meloises. Since the fatal eve of St. Michael, Angelique had been tossing in a sea of conflicting emotions, sometimes brightened by a wild hope of the Intendant, sometimes darkened with fear of the discovery of her dealings with La Corriveau.

It was in vain she tried every artifice of female blandishment and cunning to discover what was really in the heart and mind of Bigot. She had sounded his soul to try if he entertained a suspicion of herself, but its depth was beyond her power to reach its bottomless darkness, and to the last she could not resolve whether he suspected her or not of complicity with the death of the unfortunate Caroline.

She never ceased to curse La Corriveau for that felon stroke of her mad stiletto which changed what might have passed for a simple death by heartbreak into a foul assassination.

The Intendant she knew must be well aware that Caroline had been murdered; but he had never named it or given the least token of consciousness that such a crime had been committed in his house.

It was in vain that she repeated, with a steadiness of face which sometimes imposed even on Bigot, her request for a lettre de cachet, or urged the banishment of her rival, until the Intendant one day, with a look which for a moment annihilated her, told her that her rival had gone from Beaumanoir and would never trouble her any more.

What did he mean? Angelique had noted every change of muscle, every curve of lip and eyelash as he spake, and she felt more puzzled than before.

She replied, however, with the assurance she could so well assume, "Thanks, Bigot; I did not speak from jealousy. I only asked for justice and the fulfilment of your promise to send her away."

"But I did not send her away. She has gone away, I know not whither,--gone, do you mind me, Angelique? I would give half my possessions to know who helped her to ESCAPE--yes, that is the word--from Beaumanoir."

Angelique had expected a burst of passion from Bigot; she had prepared herself for it by diligent rehearsal of how she would demean herself under every possible form of charge, from bare innuendo to direct impeachment of herself.

Keenly as Bigot watched Angelique, he could detect no sign of confusion in her. She trembled in her heart, but her lips wore their old practised smile. Her eyes opened widely, looking surprise, not guilt, as she shook him by the sleeve or coquettishly pulled his hair, asking if he thought that "she had stolen away his lady-love!"

Bigot though only half deceived, tried to persuade himself of her innocence, and left her after an hour's dalliance with the half belief that she did not really merit the grave suspicions he had entertained of her.

Angelique feared, however, that he was only acting a part. What part? It was still a mystery to her, and likely to be; she had but one criterion to discover his real thoughts. The offer of his hand in marriage was the only test she relied upon to prove her acquittal in the mind of Bigot of all complicity with the death of Caroline.

But Bigot was far from making the desired offer of his hand. That terrible night in the secret chamber of Beaumanoir was not absent from his mind an hour. It could never be forgotten, least of all in the company of Angelique, whom he was judging incessantly, either convicting or acquitting her in his mind as he was alternately impressed by her well-acted innocent gaiety or stung by a sudden perception of her power of deceit and unrivalled assurance.

So they went on from day to day, fencing like two adepts in the art of dissimulation, Bigot never glancing at the murder, and speaking of Caroline as gone away to parts unknown, but, as Angelique observed with bitterness, never making that a reason for pressing his suit; while she, assuming the role of innocence and ignorance of all that had happened at Beaumanoir, put on an appearance of satisfaction, or pretending still to fits of jealousy, grew fonder in her demeanor and acted as though she assumed as a matter of course that Bigot would now fulfill her hopes of speedily making her his bride.

The Intendant had come and gone every day, unchanged in his manner, full of spirits and gallantry, and as warm in his admiration as before; but her womanly instinct told her there was something hidden under that gay exterior.

Bigot accepted every challenge of flirtation, and ought to have declared himself twenty times over, but he did not. He seemed to bring himself to the brink of an avowal only to break into her confidence and surprise the secret she kept so desperately concealed.

Angelique met craft by craft, duplicity by duplicity, but it began to be clear to herself that she had met with her match, and although the Intendant grew more pressing as a lover, she had daily less hope of winning him as a husband.