eel.

Marcele fortunately could oblige the Sieur Cadet. "He did line his
livery a little, but lightly, as his Honor would see!" said he, bringing
out a bottle of cognac and a drinking-cup.

"It is to keep us from catching cold!" continued Cadet in his peculiar
way. "Is it good?" He placed the bottle to his lips and tasted it.

Marcele assured him it was good as gold.

"Right!" said Cadet, throwing Marcele a louis d'or. "I will take the
bottle to the Intendant to keep him from catching cold too! Mind,
Marcele, you keep your tongue still, or else--!" Cadet held up his whip,
and bidding the porter "good-night!" rejoined Bigot.

Cadet had a crafty design in this proceeding. He wanted not to tell
Marcele that a lady was accompanying them; also not to let him perceive
that they left Beaumanoir without one. He feared that the old porter and
Dame Tremblay might possibly compare notes together, and the housekeeper
discover that Caroline had not left Beaumanoir with the Intendant.

Bigot sat faint and listless in his saddle when Cadet poured out a large
cupful of brandy and offered it to him. He drank it eagerly. Cadet then
filled and gulped down a large cupful himself, then gave another to the
Intendant, and poured another and another for himself until, he said,
he "began to feel warm and comfortable, and got the damnable taste of
grave-digging out of his mouth!"

The heavy draught which Cadet forced the Intendant to take relieved him
somewhat, but he groaned inwardly and would not speak. Cadet respected
his mood, only bidding him ride fast. They spurred their horses, and
rode swiftly, unobserved by any one, until they entered the gates of the
Palace of the Intendant.

The arrival of the Intendant or the Sieur Cadet at the Palace at any
untimely hour of the night excited no remark whatever, for it was the
rule, rather than the exception with them both.

Dame Tremblay was not surprised next morning to find the chamber empty
and the lady gone.

She shook her head sadly. "He is a wild gallant, is my master! No wilder
ever came to Lake Beauport when I was the Charming Josephine and all the
world ran after me. But I can keep a secret, and I will! This secret I
must keep at any rate, by the Intendant's order, and I would rather
die than be railed at by that fierce Sieur Cadet! I will keep the
Intendant's secret safe as my teeth, which he praised so handsomely and
so justly!"

The fact that Caroline never returned to the C