to carry off aught else. The temptation lay
sore upon her to carry away the ring from the finger of Caroline.
She drew it off the pale wasted finger, but a cautious consideration
restrained her. She put it on again, and would not take it.

"It would only lead to discovery!" muttered she. "I must take nothing
but myself and what belongs to me away from Beaumanoir, and the sooner
the better!"

La Corriveau, with her basket again upon her arm, turned to give one
last look of fiendish satisfaction at the corpse, which lay like a dead
angel slain in God's battle. The bright lamps were glaring full upon her
still beautiful but sightless eyes, which, wide open, looked, even in
death, reproachfully yet forgivingly upon their murderess.

Something startled La Corriveau in that look. She turned hastily away,
and, relighting her candle, passed through the dark archway of the
secret door, forgetting to close it after her, and retraced her steps
along the stone passage until she came to the watch-tower, where she
dashed out her light.

Creeping around the tower in the dim moonlight, she listened long and
anxiously at door and window to discover if all was still about the
Chateau. Not a sound was heard but the water of the little brook
gurgling in its pebbly bed, which seemed to be all that was awake on
this night of death.

La Corriveau emerged cautiously from the tower. She crept like a guilty
thing under the shadow of the hedge, and got away unperceived by the
same road she had come. She glided like a dark spectre through the
forest of Beaumanoir, and returned to the city to tell Angelique des
Meloises that the arms of the Intendant were now empty and ready to
clasp her as his bride; that her rival was dead, and she had put herself
under bonds forever to La Corriveau as the price of innocent blood.

La Corriveau reached the city in the gray of the morning; a thick fog
lay like a winding-sheet upon the face of nature. The broad river, the
lofty rocks, every object, great and small, was hidden from view.

To the intense satisfaction of La Corriveau, the fog concealed her
return to the house of Mere Malheur, whence, after a brief repose, and
with a command to the old crone to ask no questions yet, she sallied
forth again to carry to Angelique the welcome news that her rival was
dead.

No one observed La Corriveau as she passed, in her peasant dress,
through the misty streets, which did not admit of an object being
discerned