"Pshaw!" exclaimed she; "he shall wait as long as I please to keep him there."

"Or as long as I stay. He is an accommodating lover, and will make an equally accommodating husband for his wife's friend some day!" remarked Bigot laughingly.

Angelique's eyes flashed out fire, but she little knew how true a word Bigot had spoken in jest. She could have choked him for mentioning her in connection with De Pean, but remembering she was now at his mercy, it was necessary to cheat and cozen this man by trying to please him.

"Well, if you must go, you must, Chevalier! Let me tie that string,"

continued she, approaching him in her easy manner. The knot of his cravat was loose. Bigot glanced admiringly at her slightly flushed cheek and dainty fingers as she tied the loose ends of his rich steinkirk together.

"'Tis like love," said she, laughingly; "a slip-knot that looks tied until it is tried."

She glanced at Bigot, expecting him to thank her, which he did with a simple word. The thought of Caroline flashed over his mind like lightning at that moment. She, too, as they walked on the shore of the Bay of Minas had once tied the string of his cravat, when for the first time he read in her flushed cheek and trembling fingers that she loved him. Bigot, hardy as he was and reckless, refrained from touching the hand or even looking at Angelique at this moment.

With the quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation.

But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angelique more than he had done.

"Thanks for tying the knot, Angelique," said he at length. "It is a hard knot, mine, is it not, both to tie and to untie?"

She looked at him, not pretending to understand any meaning he might attach to his words. "Yes, it is a hard knot to tie, yours, Bigot, and you do not seem particularly to thank me for my service. Have you discovered the hidden place of your fair fugitive yet?" She said this just as he turned to depart. It was the feminine postscript to their interview.

Bigot's avoidance of any allusion to the death of Caroline was a terrible mark of suspicion; less in reality, however, than it seemed.

Bigot, although suspicious, could find no clue to the real perpetrators of the murder. He knew it had not been Angelique herself in person. He had never heard her speak of La Corriveau. Not the smallest ray of light penetrated the dark mystery.

"I do not believe she has left Beaumanoir, Bigot," continued Angelique; "or if she has, you know her hiding-place. Will you swear on my book of hours that you know not where she is to be found?"

He looked fixedly at Angelique for a moment, trying to read her thoughts, but she had rehearsed her part too often and too well to look pale or confused. She felt her eyebrow twitch, but she pressed it with her fingers, believing Bigot did not observe it, but he did.

"I will swear and curse both, if you wish it, Angelique," replied he.

"Which shall it be?"

"Well, do both,--swear at me and curse the day that I banished Le Gardeur de Repentigny for your sake, Francois Bigot! If the lady be gone, where is your promise?"

Bigot burst into a wild laugh, as was his wont when hard-pressed. He had not, to be sure, made any definite promise to Angelique, but he had flattered her with hopes of marriage never intended to be realized.

"I keep my promises to ladies as if I had sworn by St. Dorothy," replied he.

"But your promise to me, Bigot! Will you keep it, or do worse?" asked she, impatiently.

"Keep it or do worse! What mean you, Angelique?" He looked up in genuine surprise. This was not the usual tone of women towards him.

"I mean that nothing will be better for Francois Bigot than to keep his promise, nor worse than to break it, to Angelique des Meloises!" replied she, with a stamp of her foot, as was her manner when excited.

She thought it safe to use an implied threat, which at any rate might reach the thought that lay under his heart like a centipede under a stone which some chance foot turns over.

But Bigot minded not the implied threat. He was immovable in the direction she wished him to move. He understood her allusion, but would not appear to understand it, lest worse than she meant should come of it.

"Forgive me, Angelique!" said he, with a sudden change from frigidity to fondness. "I am not unmindful of my promises; there is nothing better to myself than to keep them, nothing worse than to break them. Beaumanoir is now without reproach, and you can visit it without fear of aught but the ghosts in the gallery."

Angelique feared no ghosts, but she did fear that the Intendant's words implied a suggestion of one which might haunt it for the future, if there were any truth in tales.

"How can you warrant that, Bigot?" asked she dubiously.

"Because Pierre Philibert and La Corne St. Luc have been with the King's warrant and searched the chateau from crypt to attic, without finding a trace of your rival."

"What, Chevalier, searched the Chateau of the Intendant?"

"Par bleu! yes, I insisted upon their doing so; not, however, till they had gone through the Castle of St. Louis. They apologized to me for finding nothing. What did they expect to find, think you?"

"The lady, to be sure! Oh, Bigot," continued she, tapping him with her fan, "if they would send a commission of women to search for her, the secret could not remain hid."

"No, truly, Angelique! If you were on such a commission to search for the secret of her."

"Well, Bigot, I would never betray it, if I knew it," answered she, promptly.

"You swear to that, Angelique?" asked he, looking full in her eyes, which did not flinch under his gaze.

"Yes; on my book of hours, as you did!" said she.

"Well, there is my hand upon it, Angelique. I have no secret to tell respecting her. She has gone, I cannot tell WHITHER."

Angelique gave him her hand on the lie. She knew he was playing with her, as she with him, a game of mutual deception, which both knew to be such. And yet they must, circumstanced as they were, play it out to the end, which end, she hoped, would be her marriage with this arch-deceiver. A breach of their alliance was as dangerous as it would be unprofitable to both.

Bigot rose to depart with an air of gay regret at leaving the company of Angelique to make room for De Pean, "who," he said, "would pull every hair out of his horse's mane if he waited much longer."

"Your visit is no pleasure to you, Bigot," said she, looking hard at him. "You are discontented with me, and would rather go than stay!"

"Well, Angelique, I am a dissatisfied man to-day. The mysterious disappearance of that girl from Beaumanoir is the cause of my discontent. The defiant boldness of the Bourgeois Philibert is another.

I have heard 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 details of the plot to create a riot in the market-place that afternoon can only be conjectured by the fact of her agreeing to ride out at the hour designated, which she warmly consented to do as soon as De Pean informed her that Le Gardeur would be there and might be expected to have a hand in the tumult raised against the Golden Dog. The conference over, Angelique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it.