The shock was more fear than indignation, he realized, wondering at himself. He paced his sitting room, thinking about his scholarly status and the wealth and power of Belconti, until he had the indignation flaming. Then a knock came at the door and it opened to reveal old Hawkins with a wheeled food tray. "What do you mean, locking me in?" Cole asked hotly. He pushed past the food tray into the hall. Hawkins danced and made shooing motions with his hands, chattering shrilly in the vernacular. Cole walked to the railing around the stairwell and looked down. At the foot of the stair a giant figure, man or woman he could not say, sat and busied itself with something in its lap. Cole went back into his room. The food was boiled beef, potatoes and beets, plain but plentiful, plus bread and coffee. He ate heartily and looked out his windows again to see night coming on. Finally he tried the door and it was not locked. He shrugged, pushed the food tray into the hall and closed the door again. Then he shot the inside bolt. In bed, he finally dropped off into a restless, disturbed sleep. * * * * * Emboldened by morning and a hearty tray breakfast, Cole explored. He was in a two-floor wing, and the doors into the main house were locked. Through them he heard voices and domestic clatter. Unlocked across the second-floor hall was another suite of rooms like his own. Downstairs was still another suite and along the south side a library. The door into the garden was locked. My kingdom, Cole thought wryly. Prisoner of state! He explored the library. Tristanian books, historical romances for the most part, none less than three hundred years old. No periodicals, nothing of New Cornwall publication. He drifted from window to window looking out at the formal garden of flower beds, hedges and white sand paths. Then he saw the girl. She knelt in a sleeveless gray dress trimming a hedge. Her tanned and rounded arms had dimpled elbows, he noted. She turned suddenly and he saw, framed by reddish-brown curls, her oval face with small nose and firm chin. The face was unsuitably grave and the eyes wide. She was not staring at his window, Cole decided after a qualm, but listening. Then she rose, picked up her basket of trimmings and glided around the corner of the house. Before he could pursue her plump vision to another window, a man appeared. He looked taller than Cole and was built massively as a stone. Straight black hair fell to his shoulders, cut square across his forehead and bound by a white fillet. Under the black bar of eyebrow the heavy face held itself in grim, unsmiling lines. He moved with that odd, unstriding New Cornish walk that suggested tremendous power held in leash. Cole crossed the hall and watched the blue-clad form enter a door in the wing opposite. The girl was nowhere. Again Cole felt a twinge of fear, and boiled up anger to mask it.