ingdom
of Brass? It is hard to justify the ways of Providence, when wickedness
like hers prospers, and virtues like those of the brave old Bourgeois
find a bloody grave! My poor Amelie, too! poor girl, poor girl!"
La Corne St. Luc sat silent a long time, immersed in melancholy
reflections.

The Canadian officers read the paragraph, which revived in their minds
also sad recollections of the past. They knew that, by her who had
been the cursed cause of the ruin of Le Gardeur and of the death of
the Bourgeois, La Corne referred to the still blooming widow of the
Chevalier de Pean,--the leader of fashion and gaiety in the capital
now, as she had been thirty years before, when she was the celebrated
Angelique des Meloises.

Angelique had played desperately her game of life with the juggling
fiend of ambition, and had not wholly lost. Although the murder of
Caroline de St. Castin pressed hard upon her conscience, and still
harder upon her fears, no man read in her face the minutest asterisk
that pointed to the terrible secret buried in her bosom, nor ever
discovered it. So long as La Corriveau lived, Angelique never felt
safe. But fear was too weak a counsellor for her to pretermit either her
composure or her pleasures. She redoubled her gaiety and her devotions;
and that was the extent of her repentance! The dread secret of
Beaumanoir was never revealed. It awaited, and awaits still, the
judgment of the final day of account.

Angelique had intrigued and sinned in vain. She feared Bigot knew more
than he really did, in reference to the death of Caroline, and oft,
while laughing in his face, she trembled in her heart, when he played
and equivocated with her earnest appeals to marry her. Wearied out at
length with waiting for his decisive yes or no, Angelique, mortified by
wounded pride and stung by the scorn of Le Gardeur on his return to the
Colony, suddenly accepted the hand of the Chevalier de Pean, and as a
result became the recognized mistress of the Intendant,--imitating as
far as she was able the splendor and the guilt of La Pompadour, and
making the Palace of Bigot as corrupt, if not as brilliant, as that of
Versailles.

Angelique lived thenceforth a life of splendid sin. She clothed herself
in purple and fine linen, while the noblest ladies of the land were
reduced by the war to rags and beggary. She fared sumptuously, while men
and women died of hunger in the streets of Quebec. She bought houses
and lands, and