At last the door of the courtyard closed with a bang, and the grating of a key announced to the mercenary that he and his charge were both imprisoned in that tower of the Chateau de Condillac.
Left alone in the anteroom, mademoiselle crossed to the window and dropped limply into a chair.

Her face was still very white, her heart beating tumultuously, for the horrid threat that had been conveyed in the Dowager's words had brought her her first thrill of real fear since the beginning of this wooing-by-force three months ago, a wooing which had become more insistent and less like a wooing day by day, until it had culminated in her present helpless position.
She was a strong-souled, high-spirited girl, but tonight hope seemed extinguished in her breast.

Florimond, too, seemed to have abandoned her.

Either he had forgotten her, or he was dead, as the Dowager said.
Which might be the true state of things she did not greatly care.

The realization of how utterly she was in the power of Madame de Condillac and her son, and the sudden chance discovery of how unscrupulously that power might be wielded, filled her mind to the exclusion of all else.
By the window she sat, watching, without heeding them, the fading colours in the sky.