nt he saw her, "What
are you doing then? You must return home and go to bed at once. Why did
you not send me word before, instead of putting it off till you got so
ill?"

He did not wait for her to reply, believing her to be speechless as
usual, but placed her in a chair and began to feel her pulse. She was
trying to speak all the time, but from excitement and a strange
dizziness that had come over her, she could not at once use her new
faculty. At last she got out the words, that it was not for herself she
had come; that a _fermier_ who had ridden fast from the village of St.
Jean, further up the coast, to bring the news of the false light on the
Geant, had been thrown from his horse--but before she had finished the
sentence, the doctor, still absorbed in the contemplation of her own
case, interrupted her, exclaiming with astonishment at her new power of
speech, and demanding to know by what means it had come, and how long
she had possessed it.

But to recall the experience of that moment on the hill, when at the
thought of the danger menacing the fishing boats, her tongue had been
loosened, and the unaccustomed words had come forth, was too much for
Annette. She trembled so, and made such painful efforts to speak, that
it seemed as though she were again losing the power of utterance; and
the doctor bade her remain perfectly quiet, gave her some soothing
medicine, and directed a bed to be prepared for her in the kitchen, as
he said she was not fit to return home that night: then he himself took
the old horse from the gate where he stood, and set off for the auberge
with what haste he might.

For three or four minutes after he was gone, Annette remained
motionless in her seat, wearing her patient, deprecatory expression,
while her eyes rested on the window, without apparently seeing the
lights and dimly outlined figures that were visible on the _rade_
outside. Then her glance seemed to concentrate itself on something: the
nervous, trembling lips closed rigidly, and before they saw what she was
about to do, she had risen from her chair, and darted from the room and
out into the night.

"Our Lady guard her! It was the boats she caught sight of," said
Victorine, the cook. "There are the lights off the bay. Go, stop her,
Jeanne! Monsieur will be angry with us if anything befall her."

"Dame! I will not go," said her sister. "Can you not see that Annette is
bewitched? If she must go, she must. I will have nought to do