at she was to marry the Intendant, flattered her vanity
and raised her hopes to the utmost. She liked the city to talk of her in
connection with the Intendant.

The image of Beaumanoir grew fainter and fainter as she knelt down upon
the floor, not to ask pardon for her sin, but to pray for immunity for
herself and the speedy realization of the great object of her ambition
and her crime!

The pealing of the organ, rising and falling in waves of harmony,
the chanting of choristers, and the voice of the celebrant during the
service in honor of St. Michael and all the angels, touched her sensuous
nature, but failed to touch her conscience.

A crowd of worshippers were kneeling upon the floor of the Cathedral,
unobstructed in those days by seats and pews, except on one side, where
rose the stately bancs of the Governor and the Intendant, on either side
of which stood a sentry with ported arms, and overhead upon the wall
blazed the royal escutcheons of France.

Angelique, whose eyes roved incessantly about the church, turned them
often towards the gorgeous banc of the Intendant, and the thought
intruded itself to the exclusion of her prayers, "When shall I sit
there, with all these proud ladies forgetting their devotions through
envy of my good fortune?"

Bigot did not appear in his place at church to-day. He was too
profoundly agitated and sick, and lay on his bed till evening, revolving
in his astute mind schemes of vengeance possible and impossible, to be
carried out should his suspicions of Angelique become certainties of
knowledge and fact. His own safety was at stake. The thought that he
had been outwitted by the beautiful, designing, heartless girl, the
reflection that he dare not turn to the right hand nor to the left to
inquire into this horrid assassination, which, if discovered, would be
laid wholly to his own charge, drove him to the verge of distraction.

The Governor and his friend Peter Kalm occupied the royal banc. Lutheran
as he was, Peter Kalm was too philosophical and perhaps too faithful a
follower of Christ to consider religion as a matter of mere opinion or
of form rather than of humble dependence upon God, the Father of all,
with faith in Christ and the conscientious striving to love God and his
neighbor.

A short distance from Angelique, two ladies in long black robes, and
evidently of rank, were kneeling with downcast faces, and hands clasped
over their bosoms, in a devout attitude of prayer a