ill strain many points to oblige the Intendant of
New France for sake of the Sieur Varin. You do not know her as I do,
Bigot."

"What do you advise, Angelique?" asked he, curious to see what was
working in her brain.

"That if you will not issue a lettre de cachet, you shall place the lady
of Beaumanoir in the hands of the Mere de la Nativite with instructions
to receive her into the community after the shortest probation."

"Very good, Angelique! But if I do not know the Mere Superior, you do
not know the lady of Beaumanoir. There are reasons why the nuns would
not and could not receive her at all,--even were she willing to go, as I
think she would be. But I will provide her a home suited to her station
in the city; only you must promise to speak to me no more respecting
her."

"I will promise no such thing, Bigot!" said Angelique, firing up again
at the failure of her crafty plan for the disposal of Caroline, "to have
her in the city will be worse than to have her at Beaumanoir."

"Are you afraid of the poor girl, Angelique,--you, with your surpassing
beauty, grace, and power over all who approach you? She cannot touch
you."

"She has touched me, and to the quick too, already," she replied,
coloring with passion. "You love that girl, Francois Bigot! I am never
deceived in men. You love her too well to give her up, and still you
make love to me. What am I to think?"

"Think that you women are able to upset any man's reason, and make fools
of us all to your own purposes." Bigot saw the uselessness of argument;
but she would not drop the topic.

"So you say, and so I have found it with others," replied she, "but not
with you, Bigot. But I shall have been made the fool of, unless I carry
my point in regard to this lady."

"Well, trust to me, Angelique. Hark you! there are reasons of State
connected with her. Her father has powerful friends at Court, and I must
act warily. Give me your hand; we will be friends. I will carry out your
wishes to the farthest possible stretch of my power. I can say no more."

Angelique gave him her hand. She saw she could not carry her point with
the Intendant, and her fertile brain was now scheming another way to
accomplish her ends. She had already undergone a revulsion of feeling,
and repented having carried her resentment so far,--not that she felt
it less, but she was cunning and artful, although her temper sometimes
overturned her craft, and made wreck of her schemes.

"I a