not be afraid," he said, as he bade Veronica good night. "There are
several men in the house. You are not all alone with your five women.
The foresters have their headquarters here."

Veronica was anything but timid or nervous, but when she was in bed in
her own room at the south corner of the castle, watching the shadows
cast up by the flickering night light upon the ancient tapestries, she
realized that she was very lonely indeed, she and scarcely a dozen
servants, in the vast fortress wherein a thousand men had once found
ample room to live. Brave as she was, she glanced once or twice at the
corner of the room where the trap-door was placed. There was a carpet
over it, and a table stood there which Elettra had arranged hastily for
the toilet table. Veronica wondered what end that dark place below had
served in ancient days, and whether she were not perhaps lying in the
very room in which Queen Joanna had been smothered by the two Hungarian
soldiers. It seemed probable.

But she was very tired, and she fell asleep before long, fancying that
she was looking out from the balcony again, with the brown roofs of her
people's houses at her feet.

CHAPTER XX.

Veronica was awake early in the May morning, and looked out again upon
the great valley she had seen at sunset. It was all mist and light,
without distinct outline. A fresh breeze blew into her face as she stood
at the open window, and the sun was yet on the southeast wall, so that
she stood in the clear, bluish shadow which high buildings cast only in
the morning.

She had slept soundly without dreams, and she wondered how she could
have ever glanced last night towards the place in the corner where the
trap-door was hidden under her toilet table, or how she could have felt
herself lonely and not quite safe, in her own castle, with a dozen of
her own people, when she had never been afraid in the Palazzo Macomer.
She pushed back her brown hair, a little impatiently, and laughed as she
turned to Elettra.

"We are well here, Excellency," said the maid, with a smile of
satisfaction.

She rarely spoke unless Veronica addressed her, and was never a woman of
many words.

"And you saw no ghosts?" Veronica laughed.

"I am afraid of ghosts that wear felt slippers," answered Elettra.

An hour later Veronica sent for Don Teodoro, and they went over the
castle together. He led her first to the high dungeon on the north side.
The natural rock sprang up at that