een
illusion and reality; though the sun was shining brightly I began to
grope my way among the trees. All of a sudden I found myself face to
face with the abbe; he was anxiously looking for Edmee. The chevalier
had driven to a certain spot to watch the field pass, and not seeing his
daughter, had been filled with apprehension. The abbe had plunged into
the forest at once, and, soon finding the tracks of our horses, had come
to see what had happened to us. He had heard the gun, but had thought
nothing of it. Seeing me pale and apparently dazed, with my hair
disarranged, and without either horse or gun (I had let mine fall on the
spot where I had half fainted, and had not thought of picking it up),
he was as terrified as myself; nor did he know any more than I for what
reason.

"Edmee!" he said to me, "where is Edmee?"

I made a rambling reply. He was so alarmed at seeing me in such a
state that he felt secretly convinced I had committed some crime, as he
subsequently confessed to me.

"Wretched boy!" he said, shaking me vigorously by the arm to bring me to
my senses. "Be calm; collect your thoughts, I implore you! . . ."

I did not understand a word, but I led him towards the fatal spot; and
there--a sight never to be forgotten--Edmee was lying on the ground
rigid and bathed in blood. Her mare was quietly grazing a few yards
away. Patience was standing by her side with his arms crossed on his
breast, his face livid, and his heart so full that he was unable to
answer a word to the abbe's cries and sobs. For myself, I could not
understand what was taking place. I fancy that my brain, already
bewildered by my previous emotions, must have been completely paralyzed.
I sat down on the ground by Edmee's side. She had been shot in the
breast in two places. I gazed on her lifeless eyes in a state of
absolute stupor.

"Take away that creature," said Patience to the abbe, casting a look of
contempt on me. "His perverse nature is what it always was."

"Edmee, Edmee!" cried the abbe, throwing himself upon the grass and
endeavouring to stanch the blood with his handkerchief.

"Dead, dead!" said Patience. "And there is the murderer! She said so as
she gave up her pure soul to God; and Patience will avenge her! It is
very hard; but it must be so! It is God's will, since I alone was here
to learn the truth."

"Horrible, horrible!" exclaimed the abbe.

I heard the sound of this last word, and with a smile I repeated it like
a