ch she could leave the house! She would not mind a little danger.
Better a broken bone or two than the fate which would await her as
Hugo's wife--or as Hugo's prisoner. She turned to the window with a
resolute step, drew aside the curtains, unbarred the shutters, and
looked out.

Disappointment awaited her. There was a long space of wall, and then the
pointed roofs of some outhouses, which hid the courtyard and the road
entirely from her sight. Beyond the roofs she could see the tops of
trees, which, it was plain, would entirely conceal any view of her
window from passers-by. It would be quite impossible to climb down to
those sharp-gabled roofs; and, as if to make assurance doubly sure, the
window was protected by strong iron bars, between which nobody could
have squeezed more than an arm or foot. Moreover, the sash was nailed
down. Kitty dropped the curtain with a despairing sigh.

After a little hesitation, she took a candle and opened the sitting-room
door. All was dark in the passage outside; but from the top of the
flight of stairs leading to a higher storey, she could distinguish a
glimmer of light which seemed to come from a window in the roof. She
went up the stairs and found two tiny rooms; one a lumber-room, the
other a bed-room. These were just underneath the roof, and had tiny
triangular windows, which were decidedly too small to allow of anyone's
escaping through them. Kitty peered through them both, and got a good
view of the loch, glimmering whitely in the starlight between its black,
wooded shores. She retraced her steps, and explored an empty room on the
floor with her sitting-room, the window of which was also barred and
nailed down. Then she went down the lower flight of steps until she came
to a closed door, which had been securely fastened from the outside by
the man who brought up her box. She shook it and beat it with her little
fists; but all in vain. Nobody seemed to hear her knocks; or, if heard,
they were disregarded. She tried the baize door with like ill-success.
Hugo had said the truth; she was a prisoner.

At last, tired and disheartened, she crept back to her sitting-room. The
fire was nearly out, and the night was a cold one. She muffled herself
in her cloak and crouched down upon the sofa, crying bitterly. She
thought herself too nervous, too excited, to sleep at all; and she
certainly did not sleep for two or three hours. But exhaustion came at
last, and, although she still started