your orisons.'

When they had withdrawn, Frances, observing Emily's emotion, said, 'Do
not be alarmed, our sister is often thus deranged, though I have not
lately seen her so frantic; her usual mood is melancholy. This fit has
been coming on, for several days; seclusion and the customary treatment
will restore her.'

'But how rationally she conversed, at first!' observed Emily, 'her ideas
followed each other in perfect order.'

'Yes,' replied the nun, 'this is nothing new; nay, I have sometimes
known her argue not only with method, but with acuteness, and then, in a
moment, start off into madness.'

'Her conscience seems afflicted,' said Emily, 'did you ever hear what
circumstance reduced her to this deplorable condition?'

'I have,' replied the nun, who said no more till Emily repeated the
question, when she added in a low voice, and looking significantly
towards the other boarders, 'I cannot tell you now, but, if you think it
worth your while, come to my cell, to-night, when our sisterhood are at
rest, and you shall hear more; but remember we rise to midnight prayers,
and come either before, or after midnight.'

Emily promised to remember, and, the abbess soon after appearing, they
spoke no more of the unhappy nun.

The Count meanwhile, on his return home, had found M. Du Pont in one
of those fits of despondency, which his attachment to Emily frequently
occasioned him, an attachment, that had subsisted too long to be easily
subdued, and which had already outlived the opposition of his friends.
M. Du Pont had first seen Emily in Gascony, during the lifetime of his
parent, who, on discovering his son's partiality for Mademoiselle St.
Aubert, his inferior in point of fortune, forbade him to declare it to
her family, or to think of her more. During the life of his father, he
had observed the first command, but had found it impracticable to obey
the second, and had, sometimes, soothed his passion by visiting her
favourite haunts, among which was the fishing-house, where, once or
twice, he addressed her in verse, concealing his name, in obedience to
the promise he had given his father. There too he played the pathetic
air, to which she had listened with such surprise and admiration; and
there he found the miniature, that had since cherished a passion fatal
to his repose. During his expedition into Italy, his father died; but
he received his liberty at a moment, when he was the least enabled to
profit by it, since th