doors.

"Go on, go on! This comes of all your delay," he muttered, and Angelot
looked round, alarmed, while Helene turned white with fear.

Then the person in the corridor, whoever this might be, evidently saw a
light through some chink in the chapel door, for the latch was lifted,
and a small but impatient voice cried out, "Helene--are you there?"

It was not the voice of Adelaide. Angelot looked at Helene and smiled;
the Cure hesitated. Monsieur de Sainfoy walked frowning to the door,
which he had locked, and flung it open.

"Come in, mademoiselle," he said. "Here is your witness, Monsieur le
Cure."

Mademoiselle Moineau, flushed, agitated, in her best gown, stood on the
threshold with hands uplifted.

"What--what is all this?" she stammered; and the scene that met her eyes
was certainly strange enough to bewilder a respectable governess.

It had occurred to Madame de Sainfoy to miss her daughter from the
ball-room. Suspecting that the stupid girl had escaped to her own room,
she had told Mademoiselle Moineau to fetch her at once, to insist on her
coming down and dancing. And even now, in spite of this amazing,
horrifying spectacle, in spite of the Comte's presence, and his voice
repeating, "Come in, mademoiselle!" the little woman was brave enough to
protest.

"What is happening?" she said, and hurried a few steps forward. "Helene,
I am astonished. This must be stopped at once. Good heavens, what will
Madame la Comtesse say!"

"Let me beg you to be silent, mademoiselle," said Herve de Sainfoy.

He had already closed and locked the door. He now bent forward with an
almost savage look; his pleasant face was utterly transformed by strong
feeling.

"Sit down," he said peremptorily. "You see me; I am here. My authority
is sufficient, remember--Monsieur le Cure, have the goodness to
proceed."

Mademoiselle Moineau sank down on a bench and groaned. Her shocked,
staring eyes took in every detail of the scene; the banished lover, the
supposed prisoner, in his country clothes, with that dark woodland look
of his; the white girl in her ball-dress, standing with bent head, and
not moving or looking up, even at her mother's name. The joined hands,
white and brown; the young, low voices, plighting their troth one to the
other; then the trembling tones of the old priest alone in solemn Latin
words, "_Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium_...."

The service went on; and now no one, not even Monsieur de Sainfoy, took
any n