What is it, she asked herself; his fair one, in some well-known boat? Ah! the owner perhaps of that face in the locket, which even his King was not to see? What in the name of all decent pride was Jeanne de Mantes doing here? Yet even as she moved again to leave him, with what dignity she might, the incomprehensible being turned to her again—turned with a smile so winning, a glance so warm and caressing, a voice so tender, that the young woman lost her footing on her momentary plane of dignity, and found herself floundering again between a tearful desire for surrender and that hot anger which only a real love is able to kindle. “How now! Adieu, say you? From your lips, sweet, that is a word I hope never to hear.” “Why should I remain, milord?” she said feebly. “You care not to keep me.” “I care so much that I will not let you go.” He came after her quickly into the room. “Why, you foolish child, how can you escape from the Tower so long as its constable means to hold you? Do you not know, I have but to call a word, and the drawbridge is raised, the portcullis dropped over the waterway—that I have the right of imprisonment here, that there are secret places where I can hide my wilful prisoners? Nay, sweet one, are we not well together here?—You shall sing to me!” Stirred with an emotion which, hitherto only playing with life, she had never known before, she murmured, blushing and trembling:— “Sing! _Eh, mon Dieu_, you hold to it, then?” “Why,” he answered her, “was it not singing that you caught my heart?” Delicately flattered, she suffered herself to be led to a cushioned seat by the deep hearth; and she was already stretching out her arms to receive the guitar, when something in his air struck her quick apprehension, something at once of eagerness for her compliance, yet of indifference toward herself. He shot restless glances toward the window, seemed to strain his ear as if for some expected signal. When his eye swept over her, it was with an impatience other than that of the fond lover. She took the instrument from his hand, and watched him with a new, critical closeness as he flung himself upon the settle opposite to her. In a tone which ill concealed irritability, he cried to her:— “Begin—begin, little bird!” Here was some odd mystery. She folded her hands across the polished olive-wood. “Heavens!” she exclaimed, and it was her turn now to mock. “What a passion for music has your lordship!” His eye shot anger upon her, beneath contracted brow. She felt at last that she had power, and her smile widened. “You and your song,” said he, “are inseparable. By your graciousness I hold you mine for a little while, nor will I be defrauded of any of the sweetness you can give.”