nt she should occasion them: accordingly, after
staying long enough to encourage the deception, she came round the
arbour, and entered at the passage by which Elgidia had gone
out:--Natura, not doubting but it was his beloved, took her in his
arms, saying, 'How transporting is the expedition you have made in
your return; and indeed we had need of it, for the night is far
exhausted, and it is necessary you should be out of this part of the
country before day-break.'

The abbess answered not to what he said, but gave him her hand; on
which he led her towards the gate, entertaining her with the most
endearing expressions as they walked, to all which she was still dumb.
Natura was not surprized at it, as imagining she was too much
engrossed by the thoughts of what she was about to do, to be able to
speak:--but how great was his mortification, when having opened the
gate, he found his servant, who having missed the horses, was just
come back from a fruitless search of them.--He drew his sword, and had
not the fellow stept nimbly aside, had certainly killed him:--while he
was venting his passion in the severest terms, the abbess shut the
gate upon him, and locked it with her own key, which, leaving in the
lock, the one he had made use of, could now be of no service.--A
caprice he had so little reason to expect in Elgidia, might very well
surprize him, especially at a time when both had so much cause to be
more grave!--he called to her, he complained, he even reproached the
unkindness, and ill-manners of this treatment, while the abbess
indulged on the other side the most spiteful pleasure in his vexation.

She left him railing at fate and womankind, without convincing him of
his error, when as she was going to the monastery, she met Elgidia
just coming out, and directing her steps towards the arbour:--they
were in the same path, and facing each other:--Elgidia, full of the
fears which usually attend actions of the nature she was about to do,
no sooner perceived the form of a woman, and habited in the same
manner as herself, than she took it for a spirit; and terrified almost
to death, cried out, 'a ghost! a ghost!' and ran, shrieking, with all
her force to the cloyster, resolved, as much as it then was in her
power to resolve on any thing, to desist from her enterprise.--She
made no stop, till she got into her chamber, where she threw herself
on the bed, in a condition not to be described.

The abbess was so well satisfied