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terms sufficiently strong to express her gratitude, and the monk departed loaded with her benedictions.
It was broad day when he returned to the abbey. His first care was to communicate what had passed to his confidante. He felt too sincere a passion for Antonia, to have heard unmoved the prediction of her speedy death, and he shuddered at the idea of losing an object so dear to him. Upon this head Matilda re-assured him. She confirmed the arguments which himself had already used: she declared Antonia to have been deceived by the wandering of her brain, by the spleen which oppressed her at the moment, and by the natural turn of her mind to superstition and the marvellous. As to Jacintha's account, the absurdity refuted itself. The abbot hesitated not to believe that she had fabricated the whole story, either confused by terror, or hoping to make him comply more readily with her request. Having over-ruled the monk's apprehensions, Matilda continued thus:
"The
