The same moment she saw, by the dim rushlight, the signs of struggle which the room presented, and discovered that Richard was gone.
Her first emotion was an undefined agony: they had murdered him, or carried him off to a dungeon! There were the bedclothes in a tumbled heap upon the floor! And--yes--it was blood with which they were marked! Sickening at the thought, and forgetting all about her own situation, she sank on the chair by the bedside.
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.