She turned on her side and spread her arms and buried her face between them, and lay so for some minutes. Then she rose from the bed, and taking from a chair beside it a long and warm robe of fine wool, slipped her arms into its great hanging sleeves, girded it around her and crossed to the southward-giving window. She looked forth and down upon wall and moat, and beyond upon the roofs of Roche-de-Frêne. A warder pacing the walk below, passed with a gleam of steel from her sight. A convent bell rang midnight. There was no moon, but the night burned with stars. One shot above the town, leaving a swiftly fading line of light. She saw all the roofs that lay this way and knew them. Castle and town, river and bridge, and the country beyond, felt not seen to-night—they were home, bathed, suffused, coloured by the profound, the inmost self, part of the self, dissolving into it. She stood before the window, a hand upon either wall, and her heart yearned over Roche-de-Frêne. Again a star shot, below her the warder passed again. Suddenly she thought of Jaufre de Montmaure, and much disliked the thought. She spoke to the stars. “Ah,” she said, “it is much misery at times to be a woman!” A week from that day, in the castle hall, crowded from end to end,—Bishop Ugo here to-day with churchmen behind him, ranks of knights, Gaucelm’s great banner spread behind the dais, and against it his shield blazoned with the orbs and wheat-sheafs of Roche-de-Frêne and the motto _I build_; everywhere a richness of spectacle, an evidenced power, a high vitality, a tension as of the bow string before the skilled arrow flies,—Thibaut Canteleu received the answer for the town, and Guiraut of the Vale the answer for Count Savaric of Montmaure. Behind Thibaut was the deputation that had attended before, the same blues and greens and reds, bright as stained glass, the same faces swarthy, or lacking blood, or pink and white of hue. Thibaut knelt in his blue tunic and grey hosen, his cap beside him on the pavement. Henceforth the town of Roche-de-Frêne should choose its own officers—mayor, council and others. Likewise it should give judgement through judges of its election upon its own offenders—always excepting those cases that came truly before its lord’s bailiff-court. Prince Gaucelm gave decision gravely, without haughtiness, or warning against abuse of kindness, or claim upon increased loyalty, and without many words. Roche-de-Frêne took it, first, in a silence complete and striking, then with a long breath and fervent exclamation.