SILK GLOVES OVER BLOODY HANDS.
It was long before Angelique came to herself from the swoon in which she had been left lying on the floor by La Corriveau. Fortunately for her it was without discovery. None of the servants happened to come to her room during its continuance, else a weakness so strange to her usual hardihood would have become the city's talk before night, and set all its idle tongues conjecturing or inventing a reason for it. It would have reached the ears of Bigot, as every spray of gossip did, and set him thinking, too, more savagely than he was yet doing, as to the causes and occasions of the murder of Caroline.
All the way back to the Palace, Bigot had scarcely spoken a word to Cadet. His mind was in a tumult of the wildest conjectures, and his thoughts ran to and fro like hounds in a thick brake darting in every direction to find the scent of the game they were in search of. When they reached the Palace, Bigot, without speaking to any one, passed through the anterooms to his own apartment, and threw himself, dressed and booted as he was, upon a couch, where he lay like a man stricken down by a mace from some unseen hand.
Cadet had coarser ways of relieving himself from the late unusual strain upon his rough feelings. He went down to the billiard-room, and joining recklessly in the game that was still kept up by De Pean, Le Gardeur, and a number of wild associates, strove to drown all recollections of the past night at Beaumanoir by drinking and gambling with more than usual violence until far on in the day.
Bigot neither slept nor wished to sleep. The image of the murdered girl lying in her rude grave was ever before him, with a vividness so terrible that it seemed he could never sleep again. His thoughts ran round and round like a mill-wheel, without advancing a step towards a solution of the mystery of her death.
He summoned up his recollections of every man and woman he knew in the Colony, and asked himself regarding each one, the question, "Is it he who has done this? Is it she who has prompted it? And who could have had a motive, and who not, to perpetrate such a bloody deed?"
One image came again and again before his mind's eye as he reviewed the list of his friends and enemies. The figure of Angelique appeared and reappeared, intruding itself between every third or fourth personage which his memory called up, until his thoughts fixed upon her with the maddening inquiry, "Could Angelique des Meloises have been guilty of this terrible deed?"
He remembered her passionate denunciation of the lady of Beaumanoir, her fierce demand for her banishment by a lettre de cachet. He knew her ambition and recklessness, but still, versed as he was in all the ways of wickedness, and knowing the inexorable bitterness of envy, and the cruelty of jealousy in the female breast,--at least in such women as he had for the most part had experience of,--Bigot could hardly admit the thought that one so fair as Angelique, one who held him in a golden net of fascination, and to whom he had been more than once on the point of yielding, could have committed so great a crime.
He struggled with his thoughts like a man amid tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon, but could find none. Still, in spite of himself, in spite of his violent asseverations that "it was IMPOSSIBLE;" in spite of Cadet's plausible theory of robbers,--which Bigot at first seized upon as the likeliest explanation of the mystery,--the thought of Angelique ever returned back upon him like a fresh accusation.
He could not accuse her yet, though something told him he might have to do so at last. He grew angry at the ever-recurring thought of her, and turning his face to the wall, like a man trying to shut out the light, resolved to force disbelief in her guilt until clearer testimony than his own suspicions should convict her of the death of Caroline. And yet in his secret soul he dreaded a discovery that might turn out as he feared. But he pushed the black thoughts aside; he would wait and watch for what he feared to find.
The fact of Caroline's concealment at Beaumanoir, and her murder at the very moment when the search was about to be made for her, placed Bigot in the cruelest dilemma. Whatever his suspicions might be, he dared not, by word or sign, avow any knowledge of Caroline's presence, still less of her mysterious murder, in his Chateau. Her grave had been dug; she had been secretly buried out of human sight, and he was under bonds as for his very life never to let the dreadful mystery be discovered.
So Bigot lay on his couch, for once a weak and frightened man, registering vain vows of vengeance against persons unknown, vows which he knew at the moment were empty as bubbles, because he dared not move hand or foot in the matter to carry them out, or make open accusation against any one of the foul crime. What thoughts came to Bigot's subtle mind were best known to himself, but something was suggested by the mocking devil who was never far from him, and he caught and held fast the wicked suggestion with a bitter laugh. He then grew suddenly still and said to himself, "I will sleep on it!" and pillowing his head quietly, not in sleep, but in thoughts deeper than sleep, he lay till day.
Angelique, who had never in her life swooned before, felt, when she awoke, like one returning to life from death. She opened her eyes wondering where she was, and half remembering the things she had heard as things she had seen, looked anxiously around the room for La Corriveau. She rose up with a start when she saw she was gone, for Angelique recollected suddenly that La Corriveau now held the terrible secret which concerned her life and peace for evermore.
The thing she had so long wished for, and prayed for, was at last done! Her rival was out of the way! But she also felt that if the murder was discovered her own life was forfeit to the law, and the secret was in the keeping of the vilest of women.