ntly; "but you cannot; those features
ever, ever haunt me!"

"For whom do you mistake me?" asked Madame de la Tour, with recovered
self-possession, but still deadly pale.

"Mistake you!" he answered, with a shudder; "no, I know you well--I
thought you would return to me! you are"--he lowered his voice, almost
to a whisper, and spoke with calm emphasis, "you are Lucie Villiers!"

"My God!" exclaimed Mad. de la Tour, "who are you? No," she quickly
added, "I am not Lucie Villiers, but I am the sister of that most
injured and unhappy lady."

"Her sister!" said the priest, striking his hand upon his forehead, with
a perplexed air; "I thought it was she herself;--yet, no, that could not
be. Her sister!" he repeated, wildly; "and do you not know me? not know
the wretched, miserable De Courcy?"

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