A piercing cry from Madame de la Tour followed these words, and attracted the attention of Jacques, who was standing before his cottage door.  He flew to assist his lady, but, before he reached her, she had sunk, senseless, on the ground, and father Gilbert was standing over her, with clasped hands, and a countenance fixed and vacant, as if deserted by reason.  Jacques scarcely heeded him, in his concern for Mad. de la Tour; he raised her gently in his arms, and hastened back to the cottage, to place her under the care of Annette; when he returned, soon after, to look for the priest, he had disappeared, and no traces of him were found in the fort or neighborhood.

CHAPTER XVIII.

              “How hast thou charm’d
    The wildness of the waves and rocks to this? 
    That thus relenting they have giv’n thee back
    To earth, to light and life.”

Lucie, immediately after parting with Stanhope, chanced to meet father Gilbert, as he was hurrying from the spot where he had just held his singular interview with Madame de la Tour.  She avoided him, with that instinctive dread of which she could never divest herself on seeing him; and he passed on, without appearing to notice her, but with a rapidity too unusual to escape her observation.  She found Annette’s quiet cottage in the utmost confusion, occasioned by the sudden illness of Madame de la Tour, who had then scarcely recovered from her alarming insensibility.  Lucie hung over her with the most anxious tenderness, and her heart bitterly accused her of selfishness, or, at best, of inconsideration, in having been induced to prolong her absence.  But her aunt did not allude to it, even after her consciousness was entirely restored; she spoke lightly of her indisposition, attributing it entirely to fatigue, though her sad and abstracted countenance shewed that her mind was engrossed by some painful subject.  She made no mention of father Gilbert; and Lucie, of course, did not feel at liberty to allude to him, though Annette had told her of their conference, and her curiosity and interest were naturally excited to learn the particulars.  It could not but surprise her, that Mad. de la Tour should have been in earnest conversation with the priest; for she had always shunned him, and ever treated Lucie’s fears as some strange deception of the imagination.

M. de la Tour returned late in the evening of that day; but the shock which his lady had received, whether mental or physical, again confined her several days to her apartment.  Lucie was convinced that this renewed indisposition was, in some manner, connected with the appearance of father Gilbert.  She, at length, ventured to speak of him to her aunt; but the subject evidently distressed her, though she confessed his peculiar manners had at first alarmed her; adding, with an attempt at gaiety, that he was probably scandalized at being so abruptly addressed by a female and a heretic.