A month of uneasy calm ends one stormy night with hooves and a pounding on the abbey gate. La Motte, sure that the officers of justice have found him, orders the lights put out and watches through the grated window, then runs for the trap-door as the old gate bursts from its hinges. The strangers who flood the hall find Adeline fainted and Madame La Motte screaming. Their leader, a man of about forty wearing the star of one of the first orders in France, tends to Adeline with a gentle air, and his young companion, whom she recognises as the stranger from the forest, bends over her. The leader explains that he is the Marquis de Montalt, owner of the abbey, benighted in the storm, and tells the family they are welcome. Then La Motte walks in. The words of welcome die on his lips, his limbs shake, and he sinks into a chair grey as death while the Marquis puts a hand to his sword.
La Motte begs for a private word, and the Marquis, who first refuses, gives way when La Motte weeps. They talk for nearly an hour in a remote room, and Madame La Motte listens in the passage. She catches only fragments: La Motte saying that the same image has pursued him in his midnight dreams, promising to lead the Marquis to the spot tomorrow, and swearing to submit to whatever he decrees. The Marquis stays about two hours, refuses a bed, and leaves at dawn after another whispered talk. Alone with his wife, La Motte forbids every question and swears he will not now reveal the cause, telling her to bury her surmise as she would avoid his curse. Madame lies awake and sees that his old gloom and tonight's terror share one cause, which proves how unjustly she had suspected Adeline.
The next day everyone waits. La Motte paces and peers from the window, Louis's whispers get nowhere, and Madame invents a story for Adeline: the two men are old acquaintances who once parted badly. Adeline finds it too small for what she saw, and notices that she is blushing at the thought of seeing the young chevalier again. The Marquis rides in, asks after Madame's "fair daughter", and walks off with La Motte into the thickest part of the forest, with Louis following at a distance. At the abbey the young man, whom the Marquis calls Theodore, talks with Adeline until her shyness falls away and each seems to guess the other's thoughts. When the Marquis has come back and gone again, Adeline recalls every word in her chamber and sighs that she will see him no more.
Louis, who believes the Marquis is tied to his father's flight from Paris, laments that they have taken refuge on the estate of the one enemy they could least afford. When he asks to share his father's trouble before he rejoins his regiment, La Motte says he does not care how soon Louis leaves if the questions go on. Madame, meanwhile, wakes to a sense of her cruelty towards Adeline and returns to her old kindness without ever explaining the lapse. Adeline welcomes the change but trusts it less, and her mind keeps circling the Marquis, La Motte, and the relation Theodore bears to the Marquis, a thought she checks as too dangerous to her peace.
Coming Up in Chapter 7
A few days on, Adeline sees the Marquis ride in again and is vexed at being caught watching from the window. La Motte praises him warmly and mocks the ghost stories about the abbey. After the Marquis dines, charming everyone, Adeline walks into the forest, where Theodore overhears her lament and asks how she is related to La Motte.
