She sprang up and looked narrowly around the chamber. She marked
with envious malignity the luxury and magnificence of its
adornments. Upon a chair lay her own letter sent to Caroline by the
hands of Mere Malheur. La Corriveau snatched it up. It was what
she sought. She tore it in pieces and threw the fragments from her;
but with a sudden thought, as if not daring to leave even the
fragments upon the floor, she gathered them up hastily and put them
in her basket with the bouquet of roses, which she wrested from the
dead fingers of Caroline in order to carry it away and scatter the
fatal flowers in the forest.
She pulled open the drawers of the escritoire to search for money,
but finding none, was too wary to carry off aught else. The
temptation lay sore upon her to carry away the ring from the finger
of Caroline. She drew it off the pale wasted finger, but a cautious
consideration restrained her. She put it on again, and would not
take it.
"It would only lead to discovery!" muttered she. "I must take
nothing but myself and what belongs to me away from Beaumanoir, and
the sooner the better!"
La Corriveau, with her basket again upon her arm, turned to give one
last look of fiendish satisfaction at the corpse, which lay like a
dead angel slain in God's battle.
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