“The suicide!  It was not an accident, then, but a suicide?” exclaimed the abbess, aghast, and pausing in her hurried walk toward the refectory.

“Oh, madam—­holy mother!—­yes, so they say!  It is enough to kill one to see it all!”

“Go into my room, child, and stay there with Sister Francoise until I return.  Such sights are too trying for such as you,” said the abbess, as she parted from the young novice, and hurried on toward the refectory.

CHAPTER XLVI.

RETRIBUTION.

She entered the long dining-hall, where a terrible sight met her eyes.

Stretched upon the table lay a man in the midst of a pool of his own blood!

In the room were gathered a crowd, consisting of three Englishmen, three gend’armes, several countrymen, several out-door servants of the convent, and half a hundred nuns and novices.

The crowd had parted a little on the side nearest the door by which the abbess entered, so as to permit the approach of an old man who seemed to be a physician, and who proceeded to unbutton the wounded man’s coat and vest, and to examine his wound.

“How horrible!  Is he quite dead?” inquired the abbess, making her way to the side of the village surgeon, for such the old man was.

“No, madam; he has fainted from loss of blood.  The wound has stopped bleeding now, however, and I hope by the use of proper stimulants to recover him sufficiently to permit me to examine and dress his wounds,” replied the surgeon, who now drew from his pocket a bottle of spirits of hartshorn, poured some out in his hands, and began to bathe the forehead, mouth and nostrils of the unconscious man.

The abbess drew nearer, stooped over the body, and gazed attentively into the pallid and ghastly face, and then started with a half-suppressed cry as she recognized the features of the man who had visited the Infants’ Asylum on the day previous, and whom the abbess now believed to be John Scott, the half brother and the “double” of the Duke of Hereward.

“Will you kindly order some brandy, madam?” courteously requested the surgeon.

“Certainly, monsieur,” replied the lady superior, who immediately dispatched a nun to fetch the required restorative.

As soon as it was brought, a few drops were forced down the throat of the fainting man, who soon began to show signs of recovery.

“I should like to put my patient to bed, madam; but the nearest farm-house is still too far off for him to be conveyed thither in safety.  The motion would start his wound to bleeding again, and the hemorrhage might prove fatal,” said the surgeon suggestively.

The abbess took the hint.

“Of course,” she said, “the poor wounded man must remain here.  I will have a room prepared for him in our Old Men’s Home.  It will not take ten minutes to get the room ready, and carry him to it.  Can you wait so long, good Doctor?”