She had already turned, however; moved on past him without answer. At the inner entrance to the "little castle" or châtelet, which presently she reached, the girl stopped. Here, without, in the shadow of two huge cylindrical towers, that crowned the feudal gate-house, a number of soldiers, seated on the steps, clinked their swords and talked; within, beneath the high-vaulted dome of the guard-room lolled the commandant and several officers on a bench before a large window. Immediately on her appearance they rose, but, merely bowing stiffly, she started toward a portal on the left. Whereupon the commandant started forward, deferentially would have spoken--stopped her, when at the same moment, the door she was approaching opened, and the Governor himself appeared. At the sight of her he started; a shade of annoyance crossed his thin features, then almost immediately vanished; his cold eyes met hers expectantly. "I have been told you were very busy, yet I must see you; it is very important--" A fraction of a moment he seemed to hesitate; then with an absent air: "Certainly, I was very busy; nevertheless--" he stepped aside; permitted her to pass, and softly closed the door. With the same preoccupied air he walked to his table before one of the large fireplaces whose pyramidal canopies merged into the ribs of the vaulting of a noble chamber, and, seating himself in a cushioned chair, looked down at a few embers. "I came," standing, with her fingers straight and stiff on the cold marble edge of the table, the girl began to speak hurriedly, constrainedly, "I wanted to see you--about the prisoners--" He did not answer. Gently stroking his wrist, as if the dampness from some subterranean place had got into it, he evinced no sign he had heard; and this apathy and his apparent disregard of her awoke more strongly the feeling she had experienced so often since that day in the cloister, when he had promised to set free the servant of the Black Seigneur; had kept his word, indeed, but-- "Can't you see," she forced herself to continue, "after what the man Sanchez thought--suspected about me, what he said that day at the Mount, after what he, the Black Seigneur, did for me"--the Governor started--"that you, if you care for me at all," he looked at her strangely, "at least, should--" "As I told you the other day," his accents were cold, "why concern yourself about outlaws and peasants clamoring for 'rights'!" "But it _is_ my concern," she said passionately. "Unless--" "Neither yours nor mine," he answered in the same tone. "Only the law's!" "The law's!" she returned. "_You_ are the law--" "Its servant!" he corrected. "But--you could spare their lives! You could deal with them more mercifully!" "The law is explicit. In the King alone rests the power to--" "The King! But before word could reach him--" "Exactly!" As he spoke, the Governor rose. "And now--" "You will not hear me?" "If there is anything else--"