The Marquis calls again a few days later, and Adeline, caught looking out for his young companion, withdraws from the window vexed. That evening La Motte, gloomy as he always is after the Marquis leaves, announces a dinner invitation and praises the man's generosity. When Adeline mentions the village story that someone was confined in the abbey and died unfairly, he laughs it off as ghost stories for the vulgar and tells her that disbelief is a merit. His defence is warmer than the occasion needs, and Adeline notices. The Marquis arrives alone the next day and charms the household with easy wit, and Madame La Motte sees her husband cheerful for the first time since Paris. When she praises the Marquis's excellent heart, La Motte begins to say it is a pity he should, and finishes only with "suffer this abbey to fall into ruins".
Afterwards Adeline walks into the forest and says aloud that she is an orphan with no friend. Theodore, the Marquis's young friend, has overheard. He offers his sympathy, then asks how closely she is related to La Motte. She answers that they are not related and that she owes him a debt she can never repay, and she asks why he needs to know. He says he fears she is deceived and that danger is near her, but he sees La Motte approaching and cannot explain, so he begs her to meet him at the same spot tomorrow evening. She promises, flustered, and he kisses her hand and vanishes. La Motte, who has not seen him, asks where Louis has gone so fast.
That night is Louis's last at the abbey. Next morning, while Madame La Motte weeps over her son's departure, he finds Adeline on the lawn and declares his love. She says she cannot return it and offers the affection of a sister, and he answers that passion here is virtue. Her fawn bounds up, and he says it first led him to her. When La Motte comes round a corner of the abbey, Louis says farewell, and Adeline retreats to her room rather than watch him go.
As evening comes, Adeline hesitates over the meeting, then decides that if the danger is real, delicacy is absurd, and goes. Theodore does not come. She walks off, returns, goes off again, and waits until twilight, angry at herself and at him. When she is calm, she reasons that he would not have troubled to warn her unless something had stopped him, and resolves to return tomorrow. That night she dreams three times. A dying man in an old chamber of the abbey grips her hand, turns healthy and smiling, and sinks through the floor. A man in a funeral cloak leads her with a torch and then chases her. In a room hung with black, a coffin stands under a pall, and when the pall is lifted blood floods the floor. She wakes sure that the dreams are too terrible and too connected to be accident, though she cannot say why they should be supernatural. She sleeps no more that night.
