with a cold sweat and my knees
were trembling. Ashamed of this strange weakness, I rushed towards the
hearth, repeating Edmee's name in agonized tones.

"Have you come at last, Bernard?" she replied, in a trembling voice.

I seized her in my arms. She was kneeling beside her father's arm-chair
and pressing to her lips the old man's icy hands.

"Great God!" I cried, when by the dim light in the room I could
distinguish the chevalier's livid face. "Is our father dead?"

"Perhaps," she said, in a stifled voice; "perhaps he has only fainted,
please God! But, a light, for Heaven's sake! Ring the bell! He has only
been in this state for a moment."

I rang in all haste. The abbe now came in, and fortunately we succeeded
in bringing my uncle back to life.

But when he opened his eyes, his mind seemed to be struggling against
the impressions of a fearful dream.

"Has he gone? Has the vile phantom gone?" he repeated several times.
"Ho, there, Saint-Jean! My pistols! Now, my men! Throw the fellow out of
the window!"

I began to suspect the truth.

"What has happened?" I said the Edmee, in a low tone. "Who has been here
in my absence?"

"If I told you," answered Edmee, "you would hardly believe it. You
would think my father and I were mad. But I will tell you everything
presently; let us attend to him."

With her soft words and loving attentions she succeeded in calming the
old man. We carried him to his room, and he fell into a quiet sleep.
When Edmee had gently withdrawn her hand from his and lowered the wadded
curtain over his head, she joined the abbe and myself, and told us that
a quarter of an hour before we returned a mendicant friar had entered
the drawing-room, where, as usual, she was embroidering near her
father, who had fallen asleep. Feeling no surprise at an incident
which frequently happened, she had risen to get her purse from the
mantel-piece, at the same time addressing a few words to the monk. But
just as she was turning round to offer him an alms the chevalier had
awakened with a start, and eyeing the monk from head to foot, had cried
in a tone half of anger and half of fear:

"What the devil are you doing here in that garb?"

Thereupon Edmee had looked at the monk's face and had recognised . . .

"A man you would never dream of," she said; "the frightful John Mauprat.
I had only seen him a single hour in my life, but that repulsive face
has never left my memory, and I have never had the slight