It was broad day when he returned to the abbey. His first care was to communicate what had passed to his confident. 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 reassured 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 overruled the monk’s apprehensions, Matilda continued thus.