Jeanne de Mantes sat sidewise in the deep window-seat of the parlour in the constable’s Tower, her dark eyes roaming about her with a curiosity not unmixed with a kind of awe. The room, dark with ancient oak to its blackened ceiling, with its huge depth of wall, its aspect of strength, silence, antiquity, resembled no apartment that she had ever entered. True, she had never penetrated into the Bastille, and true, she was here of her own free will and free to leave at her caprice; yet a small shiver crept over her. There seemed to her something ominous, something fated, about the place. All said and done, it was a prison. What should bring hither those who lived for freedom and joy? She glanced almost timidly at the man who stood, one elbow propped on the embrasure, gazing down at her with inscrutable yet perhaps mocking eyes. He matched his Tower, she thought, in the something dark and melancholy which, though he might smile and court, yet remained as undisturbed as the sombreness of the room by the leaping firelight or the early spring flowers on the table. Their glances met. In the light that fell upon her from grey skies and grey wall, the texture of her face showed flawless; richly coloured, at once soft and firm, it glowed like some southern fruit out of the cold setting. Her lips were parted: forgotten, in the momentary feeling of strangeness, all the modish airs and graces of the Louvre. She looked like a child, Rockhurst thought. He smiled at her, suddenly, kindly; sat down on the window-seat beside her and took her little amber-tinted hand in his. “This is a rude place for such a one as you,” he said; “and you look about you like some creature caught against its will. Nay, you shall but sing me a song, and take your flight again forthwith, if you so wish it.” All the woman in her awoke, petulant, displeased. Chivalry in love, a man who could desire and yet spare—that was not at all to her French taste. She drew her hands quickly from his and tossed her head. “How so,” she cried in her pretty foreign English. “Fortwit’ after my song? But now, at once, if you prefer! Your lordship is quick tired!” She sprang from the seat as she spoke. But he, stretching a lazy arm, caught her by her yielding waist. “I said, if you wish it, Mignonne. In love I am no highwayman, but a courteous dealer.” She feigned to struggle, brushing his cheek with her curls; then gave him all the candour of her eyes and the glint of a smile from her wicked lips; upon which, suddenly, he kissed them. “Ah! highwayman, after all!” she mocked. He drew her close to him, laughing silently. “Milord Constable,” said she, “if one of your soldiers down there should chance to look up, it is all over with … your reputation.” Again he laughed, struck by the audacious humour of the soft creature within the circle of his arm.