hateau, and that the
search for her was so long and so vainly carried on by La Corne St. Luc
and the Baron de St. Castin, caused the dame to suspect at last that
some foul play had been perpetrated, but she dared not speak openly.

The old woman's suspicions grew with age into certainties, when at
last she chanced to talk with her old fellow servant, Marcele, the
gatekeeper, and learned from him that Bigot and Cadet had left the
Chateau alone on that fatal night. Dame Tremblay was more perplexed
than ever. She talked, she knew not what, but her talk passed into the
traditions of the habitans.

It became the popular belief that a beautiful woman, the mistress of the
powerful Intendant Bigot, had been murdered and buried in the Chateau of
Beaumanoir.

CHAPTER XLIII. 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, w