hy did
you refuse to marry him, Angelique?"

The question fairly choked her with anger. "Why did I refuse to marry
him? Francois Bigot! Do you ask me seriously that question? Did you not
tell me of your own love, and all but offer me your hand, giving me
to understand--miserable sinner that you are, or as you think me to
be--that you pledged your own faith to me, as first in your choice, and
I have done that which I had better have been dead and buried with
the heaviest pyramid of Egypt on top of me, buried without hope of
resurrection, than have done?"

Bigot, accustomed as he was to woman's upbraidings, scarcely knew what
to reply to this passionate outburst. He had spoken to her words of
love, plenty of them, but the idea of marriage had not flashed across
his mind for a moment,--not a word of that had escaped his lips. He had
as little guessed the height of Angelique's ambition as she the depths
of his craft and wickedness, and yet there was a wonderful similarity
between the characters of both,--the same bold, defiant spirit, the same
inordinate ambition, the same void of principle in selecting means to
ends,--only the one fascinated with the lures of love, the other by the
charms of wit, the temptations of money, or effected his purposes by the
rough application of force.

"You call me rightly a miserable sinner," said he, half smiling, as one
not very miserable although a sinner. "If love of fair women be a sin, I
am one of the greatest of sinners; and in your fair presence, Angelique,
I am sinning at this moment enough to sink a shipload of saints and
angels!"

"You have sunk me in my own and the world's estimation, if you mean what
you say, Bigot!" replied she, unconsciously tearing in strips the fan
she held in her hand. "You love all women too well ever to be capable of
fixing your heart upon one!" A tear, of vexation perhaps, stood in her
angry eye as she said this, and her cheek twitched with fierce emotion.

"Come, Angelique!" said he, soothingly, "some of our guests have entered
this alley. Let us walk down to the terrace. The moon is shining bright
over the broad river, and I will swear to you by St. Picaut, my patron,
whom I never deceive, that my love for all womankind has not hindered me
from fixing my supreme affection upon you."

Angelique allowed him to press her hand, which he did with fervor. She
almost believed his words. She could scarcely imagine another woman
seriously preferred to her