"I dare
hardly look in the honest eyes of Le Gardeur after nursing such a
monstrous fancy as that," said she; "but my fate is fixed all the
same. Le Gardeur will vainly try to undo this knot in my life, but
he must leave me to my own devices." To what devices she left him
was a thought that sprang not up in her purely selfish nature.
In her perplexity Angelique tied knot upon knot hard as pebbles in
her handkerchief. Those knots of her destiny, as she regarded them,
she left untied, and they remain untied to this day--a memento of
her character and of those knots in her life which posterity has
puzzled itself over to no purpose to explain.
CHAPTER XX.
BELMONT.
A short drive from the gate of St. John stood the old mansion of
Belmont, the country-seat of the Bourgeois Philibert--a stately
park, the remains of the primeval forest of oak, maple, and pine;
trees of gigantic growth and ample shade surrounded the high-roofed,
many-gabled house that stood on the heights of St. Foye overlooking
the broad valley of the St. Charles.
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