f St. Nicholas!" exclaimed she, starting from the chair and
drawing her gaunt figure up to its full height, while her black eyes
shot daggers, "you look, Mademoiselle, as if you repented its being
done. Do you?"

"Yes! No! No, not now!" replied Angelique, touched as with a hot iron.
"I will not repent now it is done! that were folly, needless, dangerous,
now it is done! But is she dead? Did you wait to see if she were really
dead? People look dead sometimes and are not! Tell me truly, and conceal
nothing!"

"La Corriveau does not her work by halves, Mademoiselle, neither do you;
only you talk of repentance after it is done, I do not! That is all the
difference! Be satisfied; the lady of Beaumanoir is dead! I made doubly
sure of that, and deserve a double reward from you!"

"Reward! You shall have all you crave! But what a secret between you and
me!" Angelique looked at La Corriveau as if this thought now struck her
for the first time. She was in this woman's power. She shivered from
head to foot. "Your reward for this night's work is here," faltered she,
placing her hand over a small box. She did not touch it, it seemed as
if it would burn her. It was heavy with pieces of gold. "They are
uncounted," continued she. "Take it, it is all yours!"

La Corriveau snatched the box off the table and held it to her bosom.
Angelique continued, in a monotonous tone, as one conning a lesson by
rote,--"Use it prudently. Do not seem to the world to be suddenly rich:
it might be inquired into. I have thought of everything during the past
night, and I remember I had to tell you that when I gave you the gold.
Use it prudently! Something else, too, I was to tell you, but I think
not of it at this moment."

"Thanks, and no thanks, Mademoiselle!" replied La Corriveau, in a hard
tone. "Thanks for the reward so fully earned. No thanks for your faint
heart that robs me of my well-earned meed of applause for a work done so
artistically and perfectly that La Brinvilliers, or La Borgia herself,
might envy me, a humble paysanne of St. Valier!"

La Corriveau looked proudly up as she said this, for she felt herself to
be anything but a humble paysanne. She nourished a secret pride in her
heart over the perfect success of her devilish skill in poisoning.

"I give you whatever praise you desire," replied Angelique,
mechanically. "But you have not told me how it was done. Sit down
again," continued she, with a touch of her imperative manner, "and