cares with which John’s return and the prior’s threats had filled my mind for some hours.  I quickened my pace, and, seized with an involuntary trembling, I crossed the billiard-room.  At that moment I thought I saw a dark shadow pass under the windows of the ground floor, glide through the jasmines, and disappear in the twilight.  I threw open the door of the drawing-room and stood still.  There was not a sound, not a movement.  I was going to look for Edmee in her father’s room, when I thought I saw something white moving near the chimney-corner where the chevalier always sat.

“Edmee!  Is that you?” I exclaimed.

No one answered.  My brow was covered 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  When Edmee had gently withdrawn her hand from his and lowered the wadded curtain over his head, she joined the abbe and myself, and told us that a quarter of an hour before we returned a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?”