l doors leading from the
hall were shut.

The Countess, as I have said, was looking straight toward me. Her eyes
had followed the Captain to my door, she wondering what was to come out
of it. For assuredly she had not expected me to come out of it. She had
still trusted that I had gone away in the night--the Count had not told
her otherwise. Her surprise at seeing me was manifest in her startled
look, which was followed by a low cry of compassionate regret.

The Count had been watching her with a painful intentness. He had not
even turned his eyes to see me enter, having trusted to his ears to
apprise him. At her display of concern, the skin of his face tightened;
though that display was no more than any compassionate lady might have
given in a similar case. Even the Count, after a moment, appeared to
think more reasonably of her demeanour.

I bowed to her, and stood waiting for what might follow, the Captain
near me.

The Count, turning toward me for an instant to show it was I he
addressed, but fixing his gaze again upon his wife and keeping it there
while he continued speaking to me, delivered himself thus, with mocking
irony:

"Monsieur, I will not be so trifling or so churlish as to keep you in
doubt regarding your fate. In this chateau, where the right of doom lies
in me, you have been, by plain evidence and your own confession, guilty
of the murder of two men. As to what other and worse crimes you have
intended, I say nothing. What you have done is already too much. There
is only one sufficient punishment. You may thank me for granting you
time of preparation. I will give you two days--a liberal allowance, you
will admit--during which you shall be lodged in a secure place, where in
solitude and quiet you may put yourself in readiness for death."

The Countess rose with a cry, "No, no!" Her face and voice were charged
with something so much more than mere compassion, that I forgot my doom
in a wild sweet exultation. At what he perceived, the Count uttered a
fierce, dismayed ejaculation. The Captain looked at once triumphant and
resentful.

"It is enough!" cried the Count hoarsely. "The truth is clear!"

He motioned me away, and the Captain pushed me back into the little
room, quickly fastening the door. But my feeling was still one of
ecstasy rather than horror, for still I saw the Countess's tender eyes
in grief for me, still saw her arms reaching out toward me, still heard
her voice full of wild protes