sure
them in my bosom!" She gathered them up as she spoke, kissed them, and
placed them in her bosom.

"You are still my friend, Le Gardeur?" Her eyes turned upon him with the
old look she could so well assume.

"I am more than a thousand friends, Angelique!" replied he; "but I shall
curse myself that I can remain so and see you the wife of another."

The very thought drove him to frenzy. He dashed her hand away and sprang
up towards the door, but turned suddenly round. "That curse was not for
you, Angelique!" said he, pale and agitated; "it was for myself, for
ever believing in the empty love you professed for me. Good-by! Be
happy! As for me, the light goes out of my life, Angelique, from this
day forth."

"Oh, stop! stop, Le Gardeur! do not leave me so!" She rose and
endeavored to restrain him, but he broke from her, and without adieu
or further parley rushed out bareheaded into the street. She ran to
the balcony to call him back, and leaning far over it, cried out, "Le
Gardeur! Le Gardeur!" That voice would have called him from the dead
could he have heard it, but he was already lost in the darkness. A
few rapid steps resounded on the distant pavement, and Le Gardeur de
Repentigny was lost to her forever!

She waited long on the balcony, looking over it for a chance of hearing
his returning steps, but none came. It was the last impulse of her love
to save her, but it was useless. "Oh, God!" she exclaimed in a voice
of mortal agony, "he is gone forever--my Le Gardeur! my one true lover,
rejected by my own madness, and for what?" She thought "For what!"
and in a storm of passion, tearing her golden hair over her face,
and beating her breast in her rage, she exclaimed,--"I am wicked,
unutterably bad, worse and more despicable than the vilest creature that
crouches under the bushes on the Batture! How dared I, unwomanly that I
am, reject the hand I worship for sake of a hand I should loathe in the
very act of accepting it? The slave that is sold in the market is better
than I, for she has no choice, while I sell myself to a man whom I
already hate, for he is already false to me! The wages of a harlot were
more honestly earned than the splendor for which I barter soul and body
to this Intendant!"

The passionate girl threw herself upon the floor, nor heeded the blood
that oozed from her head, bruised on the hard wood. Her mind was torn by
a thousand wild fancies. Sometimes she resolved to go out like the Rose
of