She
clenched her hands, and raising them above her head, muttered an
oath between her teeth, exclaiming,--
"Par Dieu! It must be done! It must be done!" She stopped
suddenly when she had said that. "What must be done?" asked she
sharply of herself, and laughed a mocking laugh. "He gave me her
life! He did not mean it! No! The Intendant was treating me like a
petted child. He offered me her life while he refused me a lettre
de cachet! The gift was only upon his false lips, not in his heart!
But Bigot shall keep that promise in spite of himself. There is no
other way,--none!"
This was a new world Angelique suddenly found herself in. A world
of guilty thoughts and unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where
black, unscalable rocks, like a circle of the Inferno, hemmed her in
on every side, while devils whispered in her ears the words which
gave shape and substance to her secret wishes for the death of her
"rival," as she regarded the poor sick girl at Beaumanoir.
How was she to accomplish it? To one unpractised in actual deeds
of wickedness, it was a question not easy to be answered, and a
thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death came and
went before her imagination, and she clutched first at one, then at
another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds that overwhelmed
her power of choice.
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