Bigot neither slept nor wished to sleep. The image of the murdered
girl lying in her rude grave was ever before him, with a vividness
so terrible that it seemed he could never sleep again. His thoughts
ran round and round like a mill-wheel, without advancing a step
towards a solution of the mystery of her death.
He summoned up his recollections of every man and woman he knew in
the Colony, and asked himself regarding each one, the question, "Is
it he who has done this? Is it she who has prompted it? And who
could have had a motive, and who not, to perpetrate such a bloody
deed?"
One image came again and again before his mind's eye as he reviewed
the list of his friends and enemies. The figure of Angelique
appeared and reappeared, intruding itself between every third or
fourth personage which his memory called up, until his thoughts
fixed upon her with the maddening inquiry, "Could Angelique des
Meloises have been guilty of this terrible deed?"
He remembered her passionate denunciation of the lady of Beaumanoir,
her fierce demand for her banishment by a lettre de cachet.
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