"But I am the Count's guest," said I.
"It is all the same. Nobody is to go down to the garden yonder without orders."
"Orders from the Count?" I asked.
"From the Count or the Captain."
I nearly let out my thought that the Captain had a good deal of authority at the chateau, but I closed my lips in time. To show insistence would only injure my purpose: so I contented myself with a glance at the forbidden territory—a very spacious pleasance, indeed, with walks, banks of flowers, arbours, and alleys, but with nobody there to enjoy it that I could see—and went back to the hall.
As I could not sit there long inactive, for considering how the time was flying and I had accomplished nothing, I soon started in good faith for the chamber to which I had feigned to be going before. Once upstairs, however, it occurred to me to walk pass the door of that chamber, to the end of the corridor. This passage soon turned leftward into a rear wing of the building. I followed it, between chamber doors on one side and, on the other, windows looking down on the smaller garden. It terminated at last in a blind wall. I supposed myself to be now over that part of the house which lay beyond the closed door at the end of the picture gallery. I looked cautiously out of one of the windows, wondering how much of the great garden might be visible from there. I could see a large part of it, but not a soul anywhere in it. As I drew back in disappointment, I was suddenly startled by a low sound that seemed to come from somewhere beneath me—a single brief sound, which made my breath stop and pierced my very heart.
It was the sob of a woman.