The proud beauty threw back her thick golden tresses as she scanned
her fair face and magnificent figure in the tall Venetian mirror.
She drank the intoxicating cup of self-flattery to the bottom as she
compared herself, feature by feature, with every beautiful woman she
knew in New France. The longer she looked the more she felt the
superiority of her own charms over them all. Even the portrait of
her aunt, so like her in feature, so different in expression, was
glanced at with something like triumph spiced with content.
"She was handsome as I!" cried Angelique. "She was fit to be a
queen, and made herself a nun--and all for the sake of a man! I am
fit to be a queen too, and the man who raises me nighest to a
queen's estate gets my hand! My heart?" she paused a few moments.
"Pshaw!" A slight quiver passed over her lips. "My heart must do
penance for the fault of my hand!"
Petrified by vanity and saturated with ambition, Angelique retained
under the hard crust of selfishness a solitary spark of womanly
feeling. The handsome face and figure of Le Gardeur de Repentigny
was her beau-ideal of manly perfection.
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