But while the abbess was busy on her project, Elgidia had also another, though of somewhat a less desperate kind; her sister’s temper gave her but too much reason to believe she would revenge herself on her by all the ways in her power; and trembling at the thoughts of being exposed to her parents, and the censure of the world, as the other had threatened, which she knew no way to avoid, but by Natura making up this quarrel; and tho’ she knew it could only be done by his renouncing all pretensions to herself, yet she rather chose to lose the man she loved, than her reputation.  As she knew not whether the abbess would delay the gratification of her malice any longer than the next morning, she resolved to send for Natura that same night, in order to engage him to a second reconciliation with her sister, let the terms be never so cruel to herself.

She had no sooner laid this plot, than she ran to see if the servant he had left behind was yet gone, and finding he was not, bad him wait a little, that she might send a letter by him to his master.  The contents of her epistle were as follow: 

’Something has happened, which lays me under a necessity of speaking to you this night:—­the only consolation I have under the severest of all afflictions, is, that I did not take back the key I gave you in the morning:  I beg you will make use of it, and let me find you in the close arbour as soon as the darkness will permit your entrance unobserved:—­fail not, if you have any regard for the honour, the peace, and even the life of the unfortunate

Elgidia.

Natura had no sooner received this billet from the hands of his servant, than all his tenderness for the fair authoress of it revived in him, which, joined to his impatient curiosity for the knowledge of the accident she mentioned, easily determined him to do as she desired.

He set out at the close of day; but the moon rising immediately after, shone so extremely bright as proved her, no less than the sun, an enemy to the design he was at present engaged in; he was therefore obliged to wait till that planet had withdrawn her light, before he durst approach the convent.

The abbess and her companion having dressed themselves in riding habits, went at the above-mentioned hour to the gate where they expected the man and horses were attending their coming; but there was not the least appearance of any.—­the abbess, emboldened by her impatience and despair, would needs venture out some paces beyond the gate, to listen if she could hear any sound of what she wanted, but had not long continued in that posture, before she discovered by the twinkling light of the stars, two men on horseback, galloping directly to the place where she stood:—­impossible was it for her to discern what sort of persons they were, but easy to know, as there were two men, and no more than two horses, that they were not those she looked for; on which she ran with all the haste she