How long she stood there in the faint suggestion of light, she did not realize; nor when she approached the iron-barred aperture, and what she first said! Something eager, solicitous, with odd silences between her words, until the impression of a motionless form, and two steady, cynical eyes fastened on her, brought her to an abrupt pause. It was some time before she continued, more coherently, an explanation about her apprehension on account of her father, which had entirely left her when she had peered through the window of the guard-house. "You thought me, then, but a common assassin?" a satirical voice interposed. "My father hates you, and you--" "My Lady has, perhaps, a standard of her own for judging!" Unmindful of ironical incredulity, she related how she had been forced to take refuge in the wheel-house; how, when Sanchez had seen her, alarmed she had fled blindly down the passage; waited, then hearing them all coming, at a loss what else to do, had opened the wheel-house door; run into the store-room! What she had seen from there, disconnectedly, also she referred to; his rescue of the others; his remaining behind to bear the brunt--as brave an act as she knew of! Her tone became tremulous. "Who betrayed me?" His voice, bold and scoffing, interrupted. She answered. It was like speaking to some one in a tomb. "The soldier you bound gave the alarm." From behind the bars came a mocking laugh. "You don't believe me?" She caught her breath. "Believe? Of course." "You don't!" she said, and clung tighter to the iron grating. "And I can't make you!" "Why should your Ladyship want to? What does it matter?" "But it does matter!" wildly. "When your servant accused me that day in the cloister I did not answer nor deny; but now--" "Your Ladyship would deny?" "That I betrayed you at Casque? Here? Yes, yes!" "Or at the wheel-house when you called to warn the soldiers?" "You were about to--to throw yourself over!" she faltered. "And your Ladyship was apprehensive lest the Black Seigneur should escape?" "Escape?" she cried. "It was death!" "And the alternative? My Lady preferred to see the outlaw taken--die like a felon on the gallows!" "No; no! It was not that." "What then?" His eyes gleamed bright; her own turned; shrank from them. A moment she strove to answer; could not. Within the black recess a faint light from the flickering candle played up and down. So complete the stillness, so dead the very air, the throbbings of her pulses filled the girl with a suffocating sense of her own vitality. "I spoke to my father to try to get your cell changed," she at last found herself irrelevantly saying; "but could do nothing." "I thank your Ladyship! But your Ladyship's friends will be far away. Your Ladyship may miss something amusing!" "I did not bring them--did not want them to come!" "No?" Her figure straightened. "Perhaps, even, they are not aware you are here?" "They are not, unless--"