"I will never marry her, Cadet!" exclaimed Bigot, "but will make her regret all her life she did not marry me!"
"Take care, Bigot! It is dangerous playing with fire. You don't half know Angelique."
"I mean she shall pull the chestnuts out of the fire for me with her pretty fingers, until she burn them," remarked Bigot, gruffly.
"I would not trust her too far! In all seriousness, you have but the choice of two things, Bigot: marry her or send her to the Convent."
"I would not do the one, and I could not do the other, Cadet," was Bigot's prompt reply to this suggestion.
"Tut! Mere Migeon de la Nativite will respect your lettre de cachet, and provide a close, comfortable cell for this pretty penitent in the Ursulines," said Cadet.
"Not she! Mere Migeon gave me one of her parlor-lectures once, and I care not for another. Egad, Cadet! she made me the nearest of being ashamed of Francois Bigot of any one I ever listened to!
Could you have seen her, with her veil thrown back, her pale face still paler with indignation, her black eyes looking still blacker beneath the white fillet upon her forehead, and then her tongue, Cadet! Well, I withdrew my proposal and felt myself rather cheapened in the presence of Mere Migeon."
"Ay, I hear she is a clipper when she gets a sinner by the hair!
What was the proposal you made to her, Bigot?" asked Cadet, smiling as if he knew.
"Oh, it was not worth a livre to make such a row about! I only proposed to send a truant damsel to the Convent to repent of MY faults, that was all! But I could never dispose of Angelique in that way," continued the Intendant, with a shrug.
"Egad! she will fool any man faster than he can make a fool of her!
But I would try Mere Migeon, notwithstanding," replied Cadet. "She is the only one to break in this wild filly and nail her tongue fast to her prayers!"
"It is useless trying. They know Angelique too well. She would turn the Convent out of the windows in the time of a neuvaine. They are all really afraid of her," replied Bigot.
"Then you must marry her, or do worse, Bigot. I see nothing else for it," was Cadet's reply.
"Well, I will do worse, if worse can be; for marry her I will not!" said Bigot, stamping his foot upon the floor.
"It is understood, then, Bigot, not a word, a hint, a look is to be given to Angelique regarding your suspicions of her complicity in this murder?"
"Yes, it is understood. The secret is like the devil's tontine,--he catches the last possessor of it."
"I expect to be the last, then, if I keep in your company, Bigot," remarked Cadet.
Cadet having settled this point to his mind, reclined back in his easy chair and smoked on in silence, while the Intendant kept walking the floor anxiously, because he saw farther than his companion the shadows of coming events.
Sometimes he stopped impatiently at the window, beating a tattoo with his nails on the polished casement as he gazed out upon the beautiful parterres of autumnal flowers, beginning to shed their petals around the gardens of the Palace. He looked at them without seeing them. All that caught his eye was a bare rose-bush, from which he remembered he had plucked some white roses which he had sent to Caroline to adorn her oratory; and he thought of her face, more pale and delicate than any rose of Provence that ever bloomed.
His thoughts ran violently in two parallel streams side by side, neither of them disappearing for a moment amid the crowd of other affairs that pressed upon his attention,--the murder of Caroline and the perquisition that was to be made for her in all quarters of the Colony. His own safety was too deeply involved in any discovery that might be made respecting her to allow him to drop the subject out of his thought for a moment.