God have mercy upon me; my husband is dead!" In spite of the abbe's quickness of perception, he could not understand such assertions on the part of the baroness; he thought that sorrow and terror must have destroyed her reason.
"Ah! Madame," he exclaimed, "the baron had nothing to do with this movement; far from it----" He paused; all this was passing in the court-yard, in the glare of the torches which had been lighted up by the servants.

Anyone in the public road could hear and see all.

He realized the imprudence of which they were guilty.
"Come, Madame," said he, leading the baroness toward the house; "and you, also, Maurice, come!" It was with the silent and passive submission of great misery that Mme.
d'Escorval obeyed the cure.
Her body alone moved in mechanical obedience; her mind and heart were flying through space to the man who was her all, and whose mind and heart were even then, doubtless, calling to her from the dread abyss into which he had fallen.
But when she had passed the threshold of the drawing-room, she trembled and dropped the priest's arm, rudely recalled to the present reality.
She recognized Marie-Anne in the lifeless form extended upon the sofa.
"Mademoiselle Lacheneur!" she faltered, "here in this costume--dead!" One might indeed believe the poor girl dead, to see her lying there rigid, cold, and as white as if the last drop of blood had been drained from her veins.

Her beautiful face had the immobility of marble; her half-opened, colorless lips disclosed teeth convulsively clinched, and a large dark-blue circle surrounded her closed eyelids.
Her long black hair, which she had rolled up closely to slip under her peasant's hat, had become unbound, and flowed down in rich masses over her shoulders and trailed upon the floor.
"She is only in a state of syncope; there is no danger," declared the abbe, after he had examined Marie-Anne.

"It will not be long before she regains consciousness." And then, rapidly but clearly, he gave the necessary directions to the servants, who were astonished at their mistress.
Mme.