"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.