The secret is like the devil's tontine,--he
catches the last possessor of it."
"I expect to be the last, then, if I keep in your company, Bigot,"
remarked Cadet.
Cadet having settled this point to his mind, reclined back in his
easy chair and smoked on in silence, while the Intendant kept
walking the floor anxiously, because he saw farther than his
companion the shadows of coming events.
Sometimes he stopped impatiently at the window, beating a tattoo
with his nails on the polished casement as he gazed out upon the
beautiful parterres of autumnal flowers, beginning to shed their
petals around the gardens of the Palace. He looked at them without
seeing them. All that caught his eye was a bare rose-bush, from
which he remembered he had plucked some white roses which he had
sent to Caroline to adorn her oratory; and he thought of her face,
more pale and delicate than any rose of Provence that ever bloomed.
His thoughts ran violently in two parallel streams side by side,
neither of them disappearing for a moment amid the crowd of other
affairs that pressed upon his attention,--the murder of Caroline and
the perquisition that was to be made for her in all quarters of the
Colony.
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