“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.”
The Intendant had recently bestowed a number of valuable shares in the Grand Company upon the brother of Angélique, making the fortune of that extravagant young nobleman.
“I am glad you will be his friend, if only for my sake,” added she, coquettishly. “But some great friends of yours like him not. Your sweet sister Amélie shrank like a sensitive plant at the mention of his name, and the Lady de Tilly put on her gravest look to-day when I spoke of the Chevalier Bigot.”
Le Gardeur gave Angélique an equivocal look at mention of his sister. “My sister Amélie is an angel in the flesh,” said he. “A man need be little less than divine to meet her full approval; and my good aunt has heard something of the genial life of the Intendant. One may excuse a reproving shake of her noble head.”