Angélique des Meloises had remained all day in her house, counting the hours as they flew by, laden with the fate of her unsuspecting rival at Beaumanoir. Night had now closed in; the lamps were lit, the fire again burned red upon the hearth. Her door was inexorably shut against all visitors. Lizette had been sent away until the morrow; Angélique sat alone and expectant of the arrival of La Corriveau. The gay dress in which she had outshone all her sex at the ball on the previous night lay still in a heap upon the floor, where last night she had thrown it aside, like the robe of innocence which once invested her. Her face was beautiful, but cruel, and in its expression terrible as Medea's brooding over her vengeance sworn against Creusa for her sin with Jason. She sat in a careless dishabille, with one white arm partly bare. Her long golden locks flowed loosely down her back and touched the floor, as she sat on her chair and watched and waited for the coming footsteps of La Corriveau. Her lips were compressed with a terrible resolution; her eyes glanced red as they alternately reflected the glow of the fire within them and of the fire without. Her hands were clasped nervously together, with a grip like iron, and lay in her lap, while her dainty foot marked the rhythm of the tragical thoughts that swept like a song of doom through her soul. The few compunctious feelings which struggled up into her mind were instantly overborne by the passionate reflection that the lady of Beaumanoir must die! “I must, or she must--one or other! We cannot both live and marry this man!” exclaimed she, passionately. “Has it come to this: which of us shall be the wife, which the mistress? By God, I would kill him too, if I thought he hesitated in his choice; but he shall soon have no choice but one! Her death be on her own head and on Bigot's--not on mine!” And the wretched girl strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!--a course which Angélique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own eyes, and less wicked in the sight of God. “Why did that mysterious woman go to Beaumanoir and place herself in the path of Angélique des Meloises?” exclaimed she angrily. “Why did Bigot reject my earnest prayer, for it was earnest, for a lettre de cachet to send her unharmed away out of New France?”