I must not!" said she; "affront him I will not! cease to love him is
out of my power as much as is my ability to love the Intendant, whom I
cordially detest, and shall marry all the same!" She pressed her hands
over her eyes, and sat silent for a few minutes. "But I am not sure of
it! That woman remains still at Beaumanoir! Will my scheming to remove
her be all in vain or no?" Angelique recollected with a shudder a
thought that had leaped in her bosom, like a young Satan, engendered of
evil desires. "I dare hardly look in the honest eyes of Le Gardeur after
nursing such a monstrous fancy as that," said she; "but my fate is fixed
all the same. Le Gardeur will vainly try to undo this knot in my life,
but he must leave me to my own devices." To what devices she left him
was a thought that sprang not up in her purely selfish nature.

In her perplexity Angelique tied knot upon knot hard as pebbles in her
handkerchief. Those knots of her destiny, as she regarded them, she left
untied, and they remain untied to this day--a memento of her character
and of those knots in her life which posterity has puzzled itself over
to no purpose to explain.

CHAPTER XX. BELMONT.

A short drive from the gate of St. John stood the old mansion of
Belmont, the country-seat of the Bourgeois Philibert--a stately park,
the remains of the primeval forest of oak, maple, and pine; trees of
gigantic growth and ample shade surrounded the high-roofed, many-gabled
house that stood on the heights of St. Foye overlooking the broad valley
of the St. Charles. The bright river wound like a silver serpent through
the flat meadows in the bottom of the valley, while the opposite slopes
of alternate field and forest stretched away to the distant range of the
Laurentian hills, whose pale blue summits mingled with the blue sky at
midday or, wrapped in mist at morn and eve, were hardly distinguishable
from the clouds behind them.

The gardens and lawns of Belmont were stirring with gay company to-day
in honor of the fete of Pierre Philibert upon his return home from the
campaign in Acadia. Troops of ladies in costumes and toilettes of the
latest Parisian fashion gladdened the eye with pictures of grace and
beauty which Paris itself could not have surpassed. Gentlemen in full
dress, in an age when dress was an essential part of a gentleman's
distinction, accompanied the ladies with the gallantry, vivacity, and
politeness belonging to France, and to France alo