Marie Exili kept her secret well. She played the ingenue to
perfection. Her straight figure and black eyes having drawn a
second glance from the Sieur Corriveau, a rich habitan of St.
Valier, who was looking for a servant among the crowd of paysannes
who had just arrived from France, he could not escape from the power
of their fascination.
He took Marie Exili home with him, and installed her in his
household, where his wife soon died of some inexplicable disease
which baffled the knowledge of both the doctor and the curate, the
two wisest men in the parish. The Sieur Corriveau ended his
widowhood by marrying Marie Exili, and soon died himself, leaving
his whole fortune and one daughter, the image of her mother, to
Marie.
Marie Exili, ever in dread of the perquisitions of Desgrais, kept
very quiet in her secluded home on the St. Lawrence, guarding her
secret with a life-long apprehension, and but occasionally and in
the darkest ways practising her deadly skill. She found some
compensation and relief for her suppressed passions in the clinging
sympathy of her daughter, Marie Josephte dit La Corriveau, who
worshipped all that was evil in her mother, and in spite of an
occasional reluctance, springing from some maternal instinct, drew
from her every secret of her life.
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