I made Messer Ramiro a profound obeisance, and withdrew in the wake of the seneschal.
He led me up a flight of stairs that rose from the hall and along a gallery that ran half round it, then plunging down a corridor he halted presently, and, opening a door, ushered me into a tolerably furnished room.
A servant followed hanging the clothes that I had worn when I arrived.
The old man lingered a moment after the servant had withdrawn, and his hollow eyes rested on me for a second.

I thought that he was on the point of saying something, and I waited returning his glance with one that quailed before the anguish of his own.

I feared to speak, to offer an expression of the sympathy that filled my heart; for in that strange place I could not tell how far a man was to be trusted--even a man so wronged as this one.

On his own part it may be that a like doubt beset him concerning me, for in the end he departed as he had come, no word having passed his ashen lips.
Left alone, I surveyed my surroundings by the light of the taper he had left in the iron sconce on the wall.

The single window overlooked the courtyard, so that even had I been disposed and able to cut through the iron that barred it, I should but succeed in falling into the hands of the guards who abounded in that nest of infamy.
So that, for the night at least, the notion of flight must be abandoned.
What the morrow would bring forth we must wait and see.