Bilot, commanding him to remove it instantly from her sight, and to be careful not to mention this fresh affront to Captain Fracasse.  The worthy landlord could not help feeling enthusiastic admiration for the conduct of the young actress, who rejected jewels that would have made a duchess envious, and as he retired bowed to her as respectfully and profoundly as he would have done to a queen.  After he had withdrawn and she was left alone, Isabelle, feeling agitated and feverish, opened her window for a breath of fresh air, and to cool her burning cheeks and brow.  She saw a bright light issuing from a couple of windows in the mansion of the Duke of Vallombreuse—­doubtless in the room where the wounded young nobleman lay—­but the garden and the little alley beneath her seemed absolutely deserted.  In a moment, however, she caught a low whisper from the latter, not intended for her ears, which said, “She has not gone to bed yet.”  She softly leaned out of her window—­the room within was not lighted, so she could not be seen—­and peering anxiously into the darkness thought she could distinguish two cloaked figures lurking in the alley, and farther away, near one end of it, a third one, apparently on the watch.  They seemed to feel that they were observed, and all three presently slunk away and vanished, leaving Isabelle half in doubt as to whether they were the creatures of her excited imagination, or had been real men prowling there.  Tired at last of watching, without hearing or seeing anything more, she withdrew from the window, closed and secured it softly, procured a light, saw that the great, clumsy bolt on her door was property adjusted, and made her preparations for bed; lying down at last and trying to sleep, for she was very tired, but haunted by vague fears and doubts that made her anxious and uneasy.  She did not extinguish her light, but placed it near the bed, and strove to reassure herself and reason away her nameless terror; but all in vain.  At every little noise—­the cracking of the furniture or the falling of a cinder in the fire-place, she started up in fresh alarm, and could not close her eyes.  High up in the wall of one side of her room was a small round window—­a bull’s eye—­evidently intended to give light and air to some dark inner chamber or closet, which looked like a great black eye in the gray wall, keeping an unwinking watch upon her, and Isabelle found herself again and again glancing up at it with a shudder.  It was crossed by two strong iron bars, leaving four small apertures, so that there could not possibly be any danger of intrusion from that quarter, yet she could not avoid feeling nervous about it, and at times fancied that she could see two gleaming eye-balls in its black depths.  She lay for a long time perfectly motionless gazing at it, like one under a spell, and at last was paralyzed with horror when a head actually appeared at one of the four openings—­a small, dark head, with wild, tangled elf-locks hanging