he had already left the place, on her return to her father's house!
Believing that he must have passed her in the darkness, Middleton
retraced his steps to meet with another disappointment. Inez had
not been seen. Without communicating his intention to any one, the
bridegroom proceeded with a palpitating heart to the little sequestered
arbour, where he had overheard his bride offering up those petitions for
his happiness and conversion. Here, too, he was disappointed; and then
all was afloat, in the painful incertitude of doubt and conjecture.

For many hours, a secret distrust of the motives of his wife caused
Middleton to proceed in the search with delicacy and caution. But as day
dawned, without restoring her to the arms of her father or her husband,
reserve was thrown aside, and her unaccountable absence was loudly
proclaimed. The enquiries after the lost Inez were now direct and open;
but they proved equally fruitless. No one had seen her, or heard of her,
from the moment that she left the cottage of her nurse.

Day succeeded day, and still no tidings rewarded the search that was
immediately instituted, until she was finally given over, by most of her
relations and friends, as irretrievably lost.

An event of so extraordinary a character was not likely to be soon
forgotten. It excited speculation, gave rise to an infinity of rumours,
and not a few inventions. The prevalent opinion, among such of those
emigrants who were over-running the country, as had time, in the
multitude of their employments, to think of any foreign concerns, was
the simple and direct conclusion that the absent bride was no more nor
less than a felo de se. Father Ignatius had many doubts, and much secret
compunction of conscience; but, like a wise chief, he endeavoured to
turn the sad event to some account, in the impending warfare of faith.
Changing his battery, he whispered in the ears of a few of his oldest
parishioners, that he had been deceived in the state of Middleton's
mind, which he was now compelled to believe was completely stranded on
the quicksands of heresy. He began to show his relics again, and was
even heard to allude once more to the delicate and nearly forgotten
subject of modern miracles. In consequence of these demonstrations,
on the part of the venerable priest, it came to be whispered among the
faithful, and finally it was adopted, as part of the parish creed, that
Inez had been translated to heaven.

Don Augustin had