Luc sat silent a long time, immersed in melancholy reflections.
The Canadian officers read the paragraph, which revived in their
minds also sad recollections of the past. They knew that, by her
who had been the cursed cause of the ruin of Le Gardeur and of the
death of the Bourgeois, La Corne referred to the still blooming
widow of the Chevalier de Pean,--the leader of fashion and gaiety in
the capital now, as she had been thirty years before, when she was
the celebrated Angelique des Meloises.
Angelique had played desperately her game of life with the juggling
fiend of ambition, and had not wholly lost. Although the murder of
Caroline de St. Castin pressed hard upon her conscience, and still
harder upon her fears, no man read in her face the minutest asterisk
that pointed to the terrible secret buried in her bosom, nor ever
discovered it. So long as La Corriveau lived, Angelique never felt
safe. But fear was too weak a counsellor for her to pretermit
either her composure or her pleasures. She redoubled her gaiety and
her devotions; and that was the extent of her repentance! The dread
secret of Beaumanoir was never revealed.
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