This searching process should have led him almost at once to his daughter--a puzzling figure in the maze of events; but the Governor exhibited no haste in approaching that important witness. Only when he had marshaled his other testimony and put it in order did the scope of his sifting extend to the girl. And then had his manner been strictly judicial: maintaining an imperturbable mask, he professed not to notice the pallor of her face, the unnatural brightness of her glance. "When you sent for the mountebank to come to your apartments, did you know who he was?" the Governor had asked. "No." "When did you find out?" "When you entered the room." "Why did you not give the alarm then?" "Because," she hesitated; her face changed, "he would have killed you, I think--if I had!" "Was that solicitude for me the only reason?" "Why, what other could there be?" "What other truly? And after he left with the commandant--why did you not, then, inform me?" "You remember you had something important, from the King, to consider!" hastily. "More important than this?" "He was going to be locked up," was the best reply she could make. "And in the morning set free!" She did not answer. "And yet, you gave the word that enabled us to capture him at the wheel-house! How, by the way, came you there--in the wheel-house?" "I saw him from the abbot's bridge; heard him tell the watchman he had a message to deliver at your palace, and followed." "Again feeling solicitude for me?" "I did not know--he would dare much; and what does it matter now?" almost wildly. "You have captured him, shut him up somewhere in some terrible, deep dungeon, where--" "He is safe? True; that is the main consideration." Thereafter had the subject of the Black Seigneur been dropped between them; the pilgrimage over, the Mount resumed its normal aspect, but only for a little while! One day about a week later, a bright cortége whose appearance was in marked contrast to that of the beggarly multitude, late visitors to the rock, came riding down the road through the forest to the sea; at the verge of the sands, stopped for a first distant impression of the rock. "Noble monument, I salute you!" Smiling, debonair, the Marquis de Beauvillers removed his hat. "And the noble mistress thereof?" suggested one of his train. "She, of course!" he said, still surveying a scene different from that final memory he had carried away with him. Then had the rock reared itself in all the glamour of a sunny day; now was the sky overcast, while through a sullen mist the Mount loomed like a shadow itself. "A cold place for our gay Elise!" One or two who viewed the sight for the first time looked disappointed; even the Marquis appeared for the instant more sober; but immediately regained his lively demeanor. "Wait until you have seen it at its best," he retorted carelessly, and set the pace across the sands.