A crowd of worshippers were kneeling upon the floor of the Cathedral, unobstructed in those days by seats and pews, except on one side, where rose the stately bancs of the Governor and the Intendant, on either side of which stood a sentry with ported arms, and overhead upon the wall blazed the royal escutcheons of France.
Angélique, whose eyes roved incessantly about the church, turned them often towards the gorgeous banc of the Intendant, and the thought intruded itself to the exclusion of her prayers, “When shall I sit there, with all these proud ladies forgetting their devotions through envy of my good fortune?”
Bigot did not appear in his place at church to-day. He was too profoundly agitated and sick, and lay on his bed till evening, revolving in his astute mind schemes of vengeance possible and impossible, to be carried out should his suspicions of Angélique become certainties of knowledge and fact. His own safety was at stake. The thought that he had been outwitted by the beautiful, designing, heartless girl, the reflection that he dare not turn to the right hand nor to the left to inquire into this horrid assassination, which, if discovered, would be laid wholly to his own charge, drove him to the verge of distraction.
The Governor and his friend Peter Kalm occupied the royal banc. Lutheran as he was, Peter Kalm was too philosophical and perhaps too faithful a follower of Christ to consider religion as a matter of mere opinion or of form rather than of humble dependence upon God, the Father of all, with faith in Christ and the conscientious striving to love God and his neighbor.
A short distance from Angélique, two ladies in long black robes, and evidently of rank, were kneeling with downcast faces, and hands clasped over their bosoms, in a devout attitude of prayer and supplication.
Angélique's keen eye, which nothing escaped, needed not a second glance to recognize the unmistakable grace of Amélie de Repentigny and the nobility of the Lady de Tilly.
She started at sight of these relatives of Le Gardeur's, but did not wonder at their presence, for she already knew that they had returned to the city immediately after the abduction of Le Gardeur by the Chevalier de Pean.
Startled, frightened, and despairing, with aching hearts but unimpaired love, Amélie and the Lady de Tilly had followed Le Gardeur and reoccupied their stately house in the city, resolved to leave no means untried, no friends unsolicited, no prayers unuttered to rescue him from the gulf of perdition into which he had again so madly plunged.
Within an hour after her return, Amélie, accompanied by Pierre Philibert, had gone to the Palace to seek an interview with her brother. They were rudely denied. “He was playing a game of piquet for the championship of the Palace with the Chevalier de Pean, and could not come if St. Peter, let alone Pierre Philibert, stood at the gate knocking!”
This reply had passed through the impure lips of the Sieur de Lantagnac before it reached Amélie and Pierre. They did not believe it came from their brother. They left the Palace with heavy hearts, after long and vainly seeking an interview, Philibert resolving to appeal to the Intendant himself and call him to account at the sword's point, if need be, for the evident plot in the Palace to detain Le Gardeur from his friends.