"The Chevalier de Pean might have brought a message, perhaps a love- token from Angelique to Le Gardeur to draw him back to the city," thought she. If so, she felt instinctively that all their efforts to redeem him would be in vain, and that neither sister's love nor Pierre's remonstrances would avail to prevent his return. He was the slave of the lamp and Angelique its possessor.
"Heaven forbid, Heloise!" she said faintly; "Le Gardeur is lost if he return to the city now! Twice lost--lost as a gentleman, lost as the lover of a woman who cares for him only as a pastime and as a foil to her ambitious designs upon the Intendant! Poor Le Gardeur! what happiness might not be his in the love of a woman noble-minded as himself! What happiness were he yours, O darling Heloise!" She kissed her pallid cheeks, wet with tears, which lay by hers on the same pillow, and both remained silently brooding over the thoughts which spring from love and sorrow.
"Happiness can never be mine, Amelie," said Heloise, after a lapse of several minutes. "I have long feared it, now I know it. Le Gardeur loves Angelique; he is wholly hers, and not one little corner of his heart is left for poor Heloise to nestle in! I did not ask much, Amelie, but I have not retained the little interest I believed was once mine! He has thrown the whole treasure of his life at her feet. After playing with it, she will spurn it for a more ambitious alliance! Oh, Amelie!" exclaimed she with vivacity, "I could be wicked! Heaven forgive me! I could be cruel and without pity to save Le Gardeur from the wiles of such a woman!"
The night was a stormy one; the east wind, which had lain in a dead lull through the early hours of the evening, rose in all its strength at the turn of the tide. It came bounding like the distant thud of a cannon. It roared and rattled against the windows and casements of the Manor House, sounding a deep bass in the long chimneys and howling like souls in torment amid the distant woods.
The rain swept down in torrents, as if the windows of heaven were opened to wash away the world's defilements. The stout walls of the Manor House were immovable as rocks, but the wind and the rain and the noise of the storm struck an awe into the two girls. They crept closer together in their bed; they dared not separate for the night.
The storm seemed too much the reflex of the agitation of their own minds, and they lay clasped in each other's arms, mingling their tears and prayers for Le Gardeur until the gray dawn looked over the eastern hill and they slept.
The Chevalier de Pean was faithful to the mission upon which he had been despatched to Tilly. He disliked intensely the return of Le Gardeur to renew his old ties with Angelique. But it was his fate, his cursed crook, he called it, ever to be overborne by some woman or other, and he resolved that Le Gardeur should pay for it with his money, and be so flooded by wine and debauchery that Angelique herself would repent that she had ever invited his return.
That she would not marry Le Gardeur was plain enough to De Pean, who knew her ambitious views regarding the Intendant; and that the Intendant would not marry her was equally a certainty to him, although it did not prevent De Pean's entertaining an intense jealousy of Bigot.
Despite discouraging prospects, he found a consolation in the reflection that, failing his own vain efforts to please Amelie de Repentigny for sake of her wealth, the woman he most loved for sake of her beauty and spirit would yet drop like a golden fleece into his arms, either through spite at her false lover or through love of himself. De Pean cared little which, for it was the person, not the inclination of Angelique, that carried away captive the admiration of the Chevalier de Pean.
The better to accomplish his crafty design of abducting Le Gardeur, De Pean had taken up his lodging at the village inn. He knew that in the polite hospitalities of the Manor House he could find few opportunities to work upon the susceptible nature of Le Gardeur; that too many loving eyes would there watch over his safety, and that he was himself suspected, and his presence only tolerated on account of the business which had ostensibly brought him there. At the inn he would be free to work out his schemes, sure of success if by any means and on any pretence he could draw Le Gardeur thither and rouse into life and fury the sleeping serpents of his old propensities,--the love of gaming, the love of wine, and the love of Angelique.
Could Le Gardeur be persuaded to drink a full measure to the bright eyes of Angelique des Meloises, and could he, when the fire was kindled, be tempted once more to take in hand the box more fatal than that of Pandora and place fortune on the turn of a die, De Pean knew well that no power on earth could stop the conflagration of every good resolution and every virtuous principle in his mind.
Neither aunt nor sister nor friends could withhold him then! He would return to the city, where the Grand Company had a use to make of him which he would never understand until it was too late for aught but repentance.
De Pean pondered long upon a few words he had one day heard drop from the lips of Bigot, which meant more, much more, than they seemed to imply, and they flitted long through his memory like bats in a room seeking an outlet into the night, ominous of some deed of darkness.
De Pean imagined that he had found a way to revenge himself on Le Gardeur and Amelie--each for thwarting him in a scheme of love or fortune. He brooded long and malignantly how to hatch the plot which he fancied was his own, but which had really been conceived in the deeper brain of Bigot, whose few seemingly harmless words had dropped into the ear of De Pean, casually as it were, but which Bigot knew would take root and grow in the congenial soul of his secretary and one day bring forth terrible fruit.
The next day was wet and autumnal, with a sweeping east wind which blew raw and gustily over the dark grass and drooping trees that edged the muddy lane of the village of Tilly.
