SENT BY GOD.

I discovered that mademoiselle's opinion was shared by all the people in Ville-en-bois, and Monsieur Laurentie favored the universal impression.

I had been sent to them by a special providence. There was something satisfactory and consolatory to them all in my freedom from personal anxieties and cares like their own. I had neither parent, nor husband, nor child to be attacked by the prevailing infection. As soon as Minima had passed safely through the most dangerous stages of the fever, I was at leisure to listen to and sympathize with each one of them. Possibly there was something in the difficulty I still experienced in expressing myself fluently which made me a better listener, and so won them to pour out their troubles into my attentive ear. Jean and Pierre especially were devoted to me, since the child that had belonged to them had died upon my lap.

Through March, April, and May, the fever had its fling, though we were not very long without a doctor. Monsieur Laurentie found one who came and, I suppose, did all he could for the sick; but he could not do much.

I was kept too busily occupied to brood much either upon the past or the future, of my own life. Not a thought crossed my mind of deserting the little Norman village where I could be of use. Besides, Minima gained strength very slowly, too slowly to be removed from the place, or to encounter any fresh privations.

When June came there were no new cases in the village, though the summer-heat kept our patients languid. The last person who died of the fever was Mademoiselle Pineau, in the mill-cottage. The old man and his son had died before her, the former of old age, the latter of fever. Who was the heir to the ruined factory and the empty cottage no one as yet knew, but, until he appeared, every thing had to be left as it was. The cure kept the key of the dwelling, though there was no danger of any one trespassing upon the premises, as all the villagers regarded it as an accursed place. Of the four hundred and twenty-two souls which had formed the total of Monsieur le Cure's flock, he had lost thirty-one.

In July the doctor left us, saying there was no fear of the fever breaking out again at present. His departure seemed the signal for mine.

Monsieur Laurentie was not rich enough to feed two idle mouths, like mine and Minima's, and there was little for me to do but sit still in the uncarpeted, barely-furnished _salon_ of the presbytery, listening to the whirr of mademoiselle's spinning-wheel, and the drowsy, sing-song hum of the village children at school, in a shed against the walls of the house. Every thing seemed falling back into the pleasant monotony of a peaceful country life, pleasant after the terror and grief of the past months. The hay-harvest was over, and the cherry-gathering; the corn and the apples were ripening fast in the heat of the sun. In this lull, this pause, my heart grew busy again with itself.

"My child," said the cure to me, one evening, when his long day's work was over, "your face is _triste_. What are you thinking of?"

I was seated under a thick-leaved sycamore, a few paces from the church-porch. Vespers were just ended; the low chant had reached my ears, and I missed the soothing undertone. The women, in their high white caps, and the men, in their blue blouses, were sauntering slowly homeward. The children were playing all down the village street, and not far away a few girls and young men were beginning to dance to the piping of a flute. Over the whole was creeping the golden twilight of a summer evening.

"I am very _triste_" I replied; "I am thinking that it is time for me to go away from you all. I cannot stay in this tranquil place."

"But wherefore must you leave us?" he asked, sitting down on the bench beside me; "I found two little stray lambs, wandering without fold or shepherd, and I brought them to my own house. What compels them to go into the wide world again?"

"Monsieur, we are poor," I answered, "and you are not rich. We should be a burden to you, and we have no claim upon you."

"You have a great claim," he said; "there is not a heart in the parish that does not love you already. Have not our children died in your arms?

Have you not watched over them? spent sleepless nights and watchful days for them? How could we endure to see you go away? Remain with us, madame; live with us, you and my _mignonne_, whose face is white yet."

Could I stay then? It was a very calm, very secure refuge. There was no danger of discovery. Yet there was a restlessness in my spirit at war with the half-mournful, half-joyous serenity of the place, where I had seen so many people die, and where there were so many new graves in the little cemetery up the hill. If I could go away for a while, I might return, and learn to be content amid this tranquillity.

"Madame," said the pleasant tones of Monsieur Laurentie, "do you know our language well enough to tell me your history now? You need not prove to me that you are not wicked; tell me how you are unfortunate. Where were you wandering to that night when I found you at the foot of the Calvary?"

There, in the cool, deepening twilight, I told him my story, little by little; sometimes at a loss for words, and always compelled to speak in the simplest and most direct phrases. He listened, with no other interruption than to supply me occasionally with an expression when I hesitated. He appeared to understand me almost by intuition. It was quite dark before I had finished, and the deep blue of the sky above us was bright with stars. A glow-worm was moving among the tufts of grass growing between the roots of the tree; and I watched it almost as intently as if I had nothing else to think of.

"Speak to me as if I were your daughter," I said. "Have I done right or wrong? Would you give me up to him, if he came to claim me?"

"I am thinking of thee as my daughter," he answered, leaning his hands and his white head above them, upon the top of the stick he was holding, and sitting so for some moments in silent thought. "Thy voice is not the voice of passion," he continued; "it is the voice of conviction, profound and confirmed. Thou mayst have fled from him in a paroxysm of wrath, but thy judgment and conscience acquit thee of wrong. In my eyes it is a sacrament which thou hast broken; yet he had profaned it first.

My daughter, if thy husband returned to thee, penitent, converted, confessing his offences against thee, couldst thou forgive him?"

"Yes," I answered, "yes! I could forgive him."

"Thou wouldst return to him?" he said, in calm, penetrating accents, but so low as to seem almost the voice of my own heart; "thou wouldst be subject to him as the Church is subject to Christ? He would be thy head; wouldst thou submit thyself unto him as unto the Lord?"

"I shivered with dread as the quiet, solemn tones fell upon my ear, poignantly, as if they must penetrate to my heart. I could not keep myself from sobbing. His face was turned toward me in the dusk, and I covered mine with my hands.

"Not now," I cried; "I cannot, I cannot. I was so young, monsieur; I did not know what I was promising. I could never return to him, never."

"My daughter," pursued the inexorable voice beside me, "is it because there is any one whom thou lovest more?"

"Oh!" I cried, almost involuntarily, and speaking now in my own language, "I do not know. I could have loved Martin dearly--dearly."

"I do not understand thy words," said Monsieur Laurentie, "but I understand thy tears and sighs. Thou must stay here, my daughter, with me, and these poor, simple people who love thee. I will not let thee go into temptation. Courage; thou wilt be happy among us, when thou hast conquered this evil. As for the rest, I must think about it. Let us go in now. The lamp has been lit and supper served this half-hour. There is my sister looking out at us. Come, madame. You are in my charge, and I will take care of you."

A few days after this, the whole community was thrown into a tumult by the news that their cure was about to undertake the perils of a voyage to England, and would be absent a whole fortnight. He said it was to obtain some information as to the English system of drainage in agricultural districts, which might make their own valley more healthy and less liable to fever. But it struck me that he was about to make some inquiries concerning my husband, and perhaps about Minima, whose desolate position had touched him deeply. I ventured to tell him what danger might arise to me if any clew to my hiding-place fell into Richard Foster's hands.

"My poor child," he said, "why art thou so fearful? There is not a man here who would not protect thee. He would be obliged to prove his identity, and thine, before he could establish his first right to claim thee. Then we would enter a _proces_. Be content. I am going to consult some lawyers of my own country and thine."

He bade us farewell, with as many directions and injunctions as a father might leave to a large family of sons and daughters. Half the village followed his _char-a-banc_ as far as the cross where he had found Minima and me, six miles on his road to Noireau. His sister and I, who had ridden with him so far, left him there, and walked home up the steep, long road, in the midst of that enthusiastic crowd of his parishioners.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH.

A MOMENT OF TRIUMPH.

The afternoon of that day was unusually sultry and oppressive. The blue of the sky was almost livid. I was weary with the long walk in the morning, and after our mid-day meal I stole away from mademoiselle and Minima in the _salon_, and betook myself to the cool shelter of the church, where the stone walls three feet thick, and the narrow casements covered with vine-leaves, kept out the heat more effectually than the half-timber walls of the presbytery. A _vicaire_ from a neighboring parish was to arrive in time for vespers, and Jean and Pierre were polishing up the interior of the church, with an eye to their own credit. It was a very plain, simple building, with but few images in it, and only two or three votive pictures, very ugly, hanging between the low Norman arches of the windows. A shrine occupied one transept, and before it the offerings of flowers were daily renewed by the unmarried girls of the village.

I sat down upon a bench just within the door, and the transept was not in sight, but I could hear Pierre busy at his task of polishing the oaken floor, by skating over it with brushes fastened to his feet. Jean was bustling in and out of the sacristy, and about the high altar in the chancel. There was a faint scent yet of the incense which had been burned at the mass celebrated before the cure's departure, enough to make the air heavy and to deepen the drowsiness and languor which were stealing over me. I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes, with a pleasant sense of sleep coming softly toward me, when suddenly a hand was laid upon my arm, with a firm, close, silent gripe.

I do not know why terror always strikes me dumb and motionless. I did not stir or speak, but looked steadily, with a fascinated gaze, into my husband's face--a worn, white, emaciated face, with eyes peering cruelly into mine. It was an awful look; one of dark triumph, of sneering, cunning exultation. Neither of us spoke. Pierre I could hear still busy in the transept, and Jean, though he had disappeared into the sacristy, was within call. Yet I felt hopelessly and helplessly alone under the cruel stare of those eyes. It seemed as if he and I were the only beings in the whole world, and there was none to help, none to rescue. In the voiceless depths of my spirit I cried, "O God!"

He sank down on the seat beside me, with an air of exhaustion, yet with a low, fiendish laugh which sounded hideously loud in my ears. His fingers were still about my arm, but he had to wait to recover from the first shock of his success--for it had been a shock. His face was bathed with perspiration, and his breath came and went fitfully. I thought I could even hear the heavy throbbing of his heart. He spoke after a time, while my eyes were still fastened upon him, and my ears listening to catch the first words he uttered.

"I've found you," he said, his hand tightening its hold, and at the first sound of his voice the spell which bound me snapped; "I've tracked you out at last to this cursed hole. The game is up, my little lady. By Heaven! you'll repent of this. You are mine, and no man on earth shall come between us."

"I don't understand you," I muttered. He had spoken in an undertone, and I could not raise my voice above a whisper, so parched and dry my throat was.

"Understand?" he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I know all about Dr. Martin Dobree. You understand that well enough. I am here to take charge of you, to carry you home with me as my wife, and neither man nor woman can interfere with me in that. It will be best for you to come with me quietly."

"I will not go with you," I answered, in the same hoarse whisper; "I am living here in the presbytery, and you cannot force me away. I will not go."

He laughed a little once more, and looked down upon me contemptuously in silence, as if there were no notice to be taken of words so foolish.

"Listen to me," I continued. "When I refused to sign away the money my father left me, it was because I said to myself it was wrong to throw away his life's toil and skill upon pursuits like yours. He had worked, and saved, and denied himself for me, not for a man like you. His money should not be flung away at gambling-tables. But now I know he would rather a thousand times you had the money and left me free. Take it then. You shall have it all. We are both poor as it is, but if you will let me be free of you, you may have it all--all that I can part with."

"I prefer having the money and you," he replied, with his frightful smile. "Why should I not prize what other people covet? You are my wife; nothing can set that aside. Your money is mine, and you are mine; why should I forfeit either?"

"No," I said, growing calmer; "I do not belong to you. No laws on earth can give you the ownership you claim over me. Richard, you might have won me, if you had been a good man. But you are evil and selfish, and you have lost me forever."

"The silly raving of an ignorant girl!" he sneered; "the law will compel you to return to me. I will take the law into my own hands, and compel you to go with me at once. If there is no conveyance to be hired in this confounded hole, we will walk down the road together, like two lovers, and wait for the omnibus. Come, Olivia."

Our voices had not risen much above their undertones yet, but these last words he spoke more loudly. Jean opened the door of the sacristy and looked out, and Pierre skated down to the corner of the transept to see who was speaking. I lifted the hand Richard was not holding, and beckoned Jean to me.

"Jean," I said, in a low tone still, "this man is my enemy. Monsieur le Cure knows all about him; but he is not here. You must protect me."

"Certainly, madame," he replied, his eyes more roundly open than ordinarily.--"Monsieur, have the goodness to release madame."

"She is my wife," retorted Richard Foster.