"The stairs are narrow, but I think I can promise you that at the top you will find what you want." He could not divest his tone of the triumph he felt.

Slight as the warning was, it sufficed; while the last word was still on his lips, she snatched the door from his grasp, closed it and stood panting before it.
What inward monition had spoken to her, what she had seen, what she had heard, besides that note of triumph in Basterga's voice, matters not.
Her mind was changed.
"No!" she cried.

"You do not go up! No!" "You will not let us see her ?" Basterga exclaimed.
"No!" Her breast heaving, she confronted them without fear.
In his surprise at her action the scholar had recoiled a step: he was fiercely angry.

"Come, girl, no nonsense," he said roughly and brutally.
"Make way! Or we shall have a little to say to you of what you did in my room last night! Do you mark me ?" he continued.

"I might have you punished for it, wench! I might have you whipped and branded for it! Do you mind me?
You robbed me, and that which you took----" "I took at his instigation!" she retorted, pointing an accusing finger at Blondel, who stood gnawing his beard, hating the part he was playing, and hating still more this white-faced girl who had come so near to ruining, if she had not ruined, his last chance of life.