d locked, and I was left to my
reflections. The room not having been designed as a prison, there was no
grilled opening in the door, and I was not exposed to the guard's view.

The Count might have kept me in my former chamber, thought I, the time
being so short. Perhaps he feared my making a rope of bed clothes and
dropping to the terrace. As for the little room off the hall, it had no
real lock, and the guards might become sleepy at night. But why did he
make this respite of two days? Was it to give himself time for devising
some peculiarly humiliating and atrocious form of death? Or was it mere
ironical pretence of mercy in his justice, and might I be surprised with
the fatal summons as soon as he was in the humour for it? To this day, I
do not clearly know,--or whether he had other matters for his immediate
care; or indeed whether, at the instant of pronouncing my sentence in
order to discover the Countess's feelings, he actually intended carrying
it out.

In any case, now that her heart had betrayed itself, I had little hope
of mercy. What came nearest to daunting me was the thought that, if I
died, my people might never know for certain what had been my fate, for
the Count would probably keep my death a secret, his own dependents
being silenced by interest and fear. Yet I felt I had no right to
complain of Fate. I had come from home to see danger, and here it was,
though my present adventure was something different from cutting off the
moustaches of Brignan de Brignan. And still my emotions were sweetened
by the sense of what the Countess had disclosed, fatal though that
disclosure might be to her also.

Such were the materials of my thoughts for the first hour or so, while I
sat on the chest that was to be my bed. But suddenly there came a
sharper consciousness of what death meant, and how closely it threatened
me. I sprang up, to bestir myself in seeking if there might be some
means of escape. The situation had changed since I had willingly
lingered at the chateau in order to be near the Countess. The reluctance
to betake myself from the place where she was, had not diminished; but I
had awakened to the knowledge that my only hope of ever seeing her again
lay in present flight, if that were possible. I could serve her better
living than dead, better free than a prisoner.

I went to the window, which was wide enough for me to put my head out.
My room was at the top of the building, and only the great tower, pa