Malheur," replied
Corriveau in a low tone. "But why do you ask that?"

"Because I read mischief in your eye and see it twitching in your thumb,
and you do not ask me to share your secret! Is it so bad as that, Dame
Dodier?"

"Pshaw! you are sharing it! wait and you will see your share of it! But
tell me, Mere Malheur, how does she look, this mysterious lady of the
Chateau?" La Corriveau sat down, and placed her long, thin hand on the
arm of the old crone.

"Like one doomed to die, because she is too good to live. Sorrow is a
bad pasture for a young creature like her to feed on, Dame Dodier!" was
the answer, but it did not change a muscle on the face of La Corriveau.

"Ay! but there are worse pastures than sorrow for young creatures like
her, and she has found one of them," she replied, coldly.

"Well! as we make our bed so must we lie on it, Dame Dodier,--that is
what I always tell the silly young things who come to me asking their
fortunes; and the proverb pleases them. They always think the bridal bed
must be soft and well made, at any rate."

"They are fools! better make their death-bed than their bridal bed! But
I must see this piece of perfection of yours to-morrow night, dame! The
Intendant returns in two days, and he might remove her. Did she tell you
about him?"

"No! Bigot is a devil more powerful than the one we serve, dame. I fear
him!"

"Tut! I fear neither devil nor man. It was to be at the hour of twelve!
Did you not say at the hour of twelve, Mere Malheur?"

"Yes! go in by the vaulted passage and knock at the secret door. She
will admit you. But what will you do with her, Dame Dodier? Is she
doomed? Could you not be gentle with her, dame?"

There was a fall in the voice of Mere Malheur,--an intonation partly
due to fear of consequences, partly to a fibre of pity which--dry and
disused--something in the look of Caroline had stirred like a dead leaf
quivering in the wind.

"Tut! has she melted your old dry heart to pity, Mere Malheur! Ha, ha!
who would have thought that! and yet I remember she made a soft fool of
me for a minute in the wood of St. Valier!" La Corriveau spoke in a hard
tone, as if in reproving Mere Malheur she was also reproving herself.

"She is unlike any other woman I ever saw," replied the crone, ashamed
of her unwonted sympathy. "The devil is clean out of her as he is out of
a church."

"You are a fool, Mere Malheur! Out of a church, quotha!" and La
Corriveau laughed a