"As if I did not know her!" she replied impatiently. "Why, she screens with all her authority that wild nephew of hers, the Sieur Varin! Nothing irritates her like hearing a bad report of him, and although she knows all that is said of him to be true as her breviary, she will not admit it. The soeurs converses in the laundry were put on bread and water with prayers for a week, only for repeating some gossip they had heard concerning him."
"Ay! that is because the venerable Mere Superior is touchy on the point of family,--but I am not her nephew, voila la differance!" as the song says.
"Well! but you are her nephew's master and patron," replied Angelique, "and the good Mere will 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 am sorry I was so angry, Bigot, as to strike you with this feeble hand." Angelique smiled as she extended her dainty fingers, which, delicate as they were, had the strength and elasticity of steel.
"Not so feeble either, Angelique!" replied he, laughing; "few men could plant a better blow: you hit me on the heart fairly, Angelique."
He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips. Had Queen Dido possessed that hand she would have held fast Aeneas himself when he ran away from his engagements.
Angelique pressed the Intendant's hand with a grasp that left every vein bloodless. "As I hold fast to you, Bigot, and hold you to your engagements, thank God that you are not a woman! If you were, I think I should kill you. But as you are a man, I forgive, and take your promise of amendment. It is what foolish women always do!"
The sound of the music and the measured tread of feet in the lively dances were now plainly heard in the pauses of their conversation.
They rose, and entered the ballroom. The music ceased, and recommenced a new strain for the Intendant and his fair partner, and for a time Angelique forgot her wrath in the delirious excitement of the dance.
But in the dance her exuberance of spirits overflowed like a fountain of intoxicating wine. She cared not for things past or future in the ecstatic joy of the present.
Her voluptuous beauty, lissomeness, and grace of movement enthralled all eyes with admiration, as she danced with the Intendant, who was himself no mean votary of Terpsichore. A lock of her long golden hair broke loose and streamed in wanton disorder over her shoulders;
but she heeded it not,--carried away by the spirit of the dance, and the triumph of present possession of the courtly Intendant. Her dainty feet flashed under her flying robe and scarcely seemed to touch the floor as they kept time to the swift throbbings of the music.
The Intendant gazed with rapture on his beautiful partner, as she leaned upon his arm in the pauses of the dance, and thought more than once that the world would be well lost for sake of such a woman. It was but a passing fancy, however; the serious mood passed away, and he was weary, long before Angelique, of the excitement and breathless heat of a wild Polish dance, recently first heard of in French society. He led her to a seat, and left her in the centre of a swarm of admirers, and passed into an alcove to cool and rest himself.