The abbess answered not to what he said, but gave him her hand; on which he led her towards the gate, entertaining her with the most endearing expressions as they walked, to all which she was still dumb.  Natura was not surprized at it, as imagining she was too much engrossed by the thoughts of what she was about to do, to be able to speak:—­but how great was his mortification, when having opened the gate, he found his servant, who having missed the horses, was just come back from a fruitless search of them.—­He drew his sword, and had not the fellow stept nimbly aside, had certainly killed him:—­while he was venting his passion in the severest terms, the abbess shut the gate upon him, and locked it with her own key, which, leaving in the lock, the one he had made use of, could now be of no service.—­A caprice he had so little reason to expect in Elgidia, might very well surprize him, especially at a time when both had so much cause to be more grave!—­he called to her, he complained, he even reproached the unkindness, and ill-manners of this treatment, while the abbess indulged on the other side the most spiteful pleasure in his vexation.

She left him railing at fate and womankind, without convincing him of his error, when as she was going to the monastery, she met Elgidia just coming out, and directing her steps towards the arbour:—­they were in the same path, and facing each other:—­Elgidia, full of the fears which usually attend actions of the nature she was about to do, no sooner perceived the form of a woman, and habited in the same manner as herself, than she took it for a spirit; and terrified almost to death, cried out, ‘a ghost! a ghost!’ and ran, shrieking, with all her force to the cloyster, resolved, as much as it then was in her power to resolve on any thing, to desist from her enterprise.—­She made no stop, till she got into her chamber, where she threw herself on the bed, in a condition not to be described.

The abbess was so well satisfied with the success of this last stratagem, that it greatly abated the thoughts of taking any further revenge:—­she went laughing to her confidante, and told her the whole story, who congratulated her upon it, and said, that in her opinion, she might take it as a peculiar providence of Heaven, that had disappointed her first design, which could only have increased her confusion, and probably brought a lasting scandal on the order.  The abbess wanted not reason, when her passion would permit her to exert it, and could not help confessing the truth of what the other remonstrated:—­she now easily saw they were Natura’s horses they had made use of, but how it came to pass that those she had bespoke, or the man she had ordered to bring them, happened to fail, remained a point yet to be discussed:—­the morning, however, cleared it up;—­the fellow acquainted her, that the farmer had no horses at home, and that as he was coming to let her know it, he saw two men at the gate, one of whom entered, so that he imagined she had provided herself elsewhere:—­she then bad him turn out Natura’s horses, which the nun having said how she had disposed of them, not thinking herself obliged to take any care of what belonged to a man, who had treated her with so much ingratitude.