The struggle was the old one--old as the race of man. In the losing battle between the false and true, love rarely comes out of that conflict unshorn of life or limb. Untrue to him, she was true to her selfish self. The thought of the Intendant and the glories of life opening to her closed her heart, not to the pleadings of Le Gardeur,--them she loved,--but to the granting of his prayer.
The die was cast, but she still clasped hard his hand in hers, as if she could not let him go. "And will you do all you say, Le Gardeur--make my will your law, my pleasure your conscience, and let me be to you all reason and motive? Such devotion terrifies me, Le Gardeur?"
"Try me! Ask of me the hardest thing, nay, the wickedest, that imagination can conceive or hands do--and I would perform it for your sake." Le Gardeur was getting beside himself. The magic power of those dark, flashing eyes of hers was melting all the fine gold of his nature to folly.
"Fie!" replied she, "I do not ask you to drink the sea: a small thing would content me. My love is not so exacting as that, Le Gardeur."
"Does your brother need my aid?" asked he. "If he does, he shall have it to half my fortune for your sake!" Le Gardeur was well aware that the prodigal brother of Angélique was in a strait for money, as was usual with him. He had lately importuned Le Gardeur, and obtained a large sum from him.
She looked up with well-affected indignation. "How can you think such a thing, Le Gardeur? my brother was not in my thought. It was the Intendant I wished to ask you about,--you know him better than I."
This was not true. Angélique had studied the Intendant in mind, person, and estate, weighing him scruple by scruple to the last attainable atom of information. Not that she had sounded the depths of Bigot's soul--there were regions of darkness in his character which no eye but God's ever penetrated. Angélique felt that with all her acuteness she did not comprehend the Intendant.
"You ask what I think of the Intendant?" asked he, surprised somewhat at the question.
"Yes--an odd question, is it not, Le Gardeur?" and she smiled away any surprise he experienced.
"Truly, I think him the most jovial gentleman that ever was in New France," was the reply; "frank and open-handed to his friends, laughing and dangerous to his foes. His wit is like his wine, Angélique: one never tires of either, and no lavishness exhausts it. In a word, I, like the Intendant, I like his wit, his wine, his friends,--some of them, that is!--but above all, I like you, Angélique, and will be more his friend than ever for your sake, since I have learned his generosity towards the Chevalier des Meloises."