Knowing the castle as she did, a very little reflection convinced her that if he had met with violence it must have been in attempting to escape; and if he had made the attempt, might he not have succeeded?  There had certainly been no fresh alarm given.  But upon this consoling supposition followed instantly the pang of the question:  what was now required of her?  The same hard thing as before?  Ought she not again to give the alarm, that the poor wounded boy might be recaptured?  Alas! had not evil enough already befallen him at her hand?  And if she did—­horrible thought!—­what account could she give this time of her discovery?  What indeed but the truth?  And to what vile comments would not the confession of her secret visit in the first grey of the dawn to the chamber of the prisoner expose her?  Would it not naturally rouse such suspicion as any modest woman must shudder to face, if but for the one moment between utterance and refutation.  And what refutation could there be for her, so long as the fact remained?  If he had escaped, the alarm would serve no good end, and her shame could be spared; but he might be hiding somewhere about the castle, and she must choose between treachery to the marquis—­was it?—­on the one hand, and renewed hurt, wrong, perhaps, to Richard, coupled with the bitterest disgrace to herself, on the other.  To weigh such a question impartially was impossible; for in the one alternative no hurt would befall the marquis, while from the other her very soul recoiled sickening.  Thus tortured, she sat motionless in the very den of the dragon, the one moment vainly endeavouring to rouse up her courage and look her duty in the face that she might know with certainty what it was; the next, feeling her whole nature rise rebellious against the fate that demanded such a sacrifice.  Ought she to be thus punished for an intent of the purest humanity?

There came a lull, and with the lull a sense of her position:  she sat in the very, jaws of slander!  Any moment mistress Watson or another might enter and find her there, and what then more natural or irrefutable than the accusation of having liberated him?  She sprang to her feet, and darted to the door.  It was locked!

Her first thought was relief:  she had no longer to decide; her second, that she was a prisoner—­till, horror of horrors! the soldiers of the guard came to seek Richard and found her, or stern mistress Watson appeared, grim as one of the Fates; or, perhaps, if Richard had been carried away, until she was compelled by hunger and misery to call aloud for release.  But no! she would rather die.  Now in this case, now in that, her thoughts pursued the horrible possibilities, one or other of which was inevitable, through all the windings of the torture of anticipation, until for a time she must have lost consciousness, for she had no recollection of falling where she found herself—­on the heap in the middle of the floor.  The gray heartless dawn had begun to peer in through the dull