Dawn finds Adeline and Theodore changing horses at a small town, and the narrator lets us into thoughts the two cannot share. Theodore says nothing of love, because delicacy forbids it while she is still frightened, and talks about the scenery instead. We learn that pity turned his admiration into love, that he secretly left his regiment, stationed on the frontier in wartime, to watch the Marquis's plans from near the abbey, and that he now counts himself her preserver. Adeline's mind runs the other way. She will soon be asking strangers for shelter again, and that dependence dims her relief. Then the postillion points to horsemen on the road behind. They swerve into a shaded lane, listen, hear nothing, and reach a village inn. While Theodore speaks to the landlord, Adeline sees a party of horsemen enter the yard and thinks one of them looks like the Marquis. She hears "I arrest you in the king's name" and Theodore's reply. He gives his word of honour not to leave without the officers, begs to be unhanded so that he can speak to a friend in the room, and finds Adeline in a faint. The officers laugh at his "friend" and try to drag him away. He draws his sword, swears no power will move him until she recovers, wounds the sergeant slightly in the shoulder, and takes a sabre stroke to the head.
The wound turns a flight into a siege, and the inn becomes a stage where strangers decide his fate. The village surgeon, who is also its physician and apothecary, declares that Theodore cannot be moved without danger. Adeline warns the sergeant that if Theodore dies, the sergeant's own life will probably answer for it, and the sergeant replies that Theodore must die anyway for quitting his post. The crowd, pitying Theodore and shaming the sergeant, calls removal murder, and the sergeant gives way until his commanding officer decides. The danger shows Adeline what she feels: she knows now that she loves him. The surgeon is the comedy in the dark. He compliments her, stammers through his account of the wound, offers her his snuff-box, and says he fears Theodore will die. The hostess retells the whole affair to a crowd downstairs, says it would be hard to die among strangers, and asks who will pay for the funeral. Adeline answers with practical steps. She promises a reward for proper care and writes offering to tell Theodore's family, but he declines, saying a letter would bring only a fruitless journey. By evening the surgeon is lecturing her on his own infallibility, with the story of a patient who died, which in his telling proved him right and his rival Lafance wrong. He calls nature "the most improper guide in the world", orders a fire, extra blankets and no drink, and in boasting he names Lafance and says where he lives. Adeline, who has decided the rival is the better man, sets about finding him, and Theodore, equally unimpressed, agrees.
A boy from Chancy knows Lafance, and a messenger rides off in the dark, but Theodore grows worse and falls into delirium while the surgeon warns that he may be dead within hours. Lafance arrives at noon, orders quiet and plenty of liquids, and Adeline dismisses the surgeon. Theodore sleeps for hours and wakes clear and free of fever. In a few days the two sit together, and Adeline admits the interest he first stirred in her. But his arrest hangs over them. He proposes marriage before he is taken, and she cannot agree so quickly to a man whose family she has never met. That evening an officer sent by the prosecutor of military offences says Theodore leaves for headquarters at dawn, that a physician can be "instructed what to say", and that the sergeant means to appear against him. At the word "deserting" Theodore's eyes flash, then he remembers how his flight looks and promises to answer at headquarters. He knows his colonel is the Marquis de Montalt, whom pride and disappointment will make tireless. The marriage plea returns and Adeline refuses again. When Theodore says she could not refuse if she truly loved him, she weeps, and he begs her pardon. She suggests a convent that takes boarders. He warns that a superior might be bribed, then sees that a wife would be a widow in the Marquis's reach if he is condemned, and gives way. He even denies himself the comfort of writing to her, in case his letters betray where she is.
At night a carriage and four arrives, and the Marquis walks in with officers and servants. Theodore calls himself a defender of innocence and defies his vengeance, and is dragged out to be fettered, crying farewell, while Adeline begs mercy for him and only angers the Marquis. He catches her at the door, then leaves and locks her in. She listens to uproar, shrieks and groans below and imagines Theodore dying. When the hostess finally opens the door she is pale and wants only the hartshorn. Then three of the Marquis's servants say a chaise is waiting. The hostess tells onlookers that Adeline is a runaway wife caught with a lover, and the servants back her, but bystanders moved by Adeline's collapse hold them off until she revives. From the hostess she learns what happened: hearing her screams, Theodore struggled with the sergeant, got hold of the sergeant's cutlass despite a chained leg, and wounded the Marquis. He himself is unhurt, though the Marquis swears to ruin him. She is thankful for a moment. Then she is hurried into the chaise before witnesses already prejudiced by the hostess. The narrator sums up an adventure that began with a prospect of security and happiness, drew her closer to a lover who proved worthy, and ended with that lover imprisoned and both of them delivered into the power of a rival "irritated by delay, contempt, and opposition."
