He then started his thoughts on another track, tending
towards the same point: how was it that the roundhead, who had been
carried insensible to the turret-chamber, had been able, ere yet
more than a film of grey thinned the darkness, without alarming a
single sleeper, to find his way from a part of the house where there
were no stairs near, and many rooms, all occupied? Clearly by the
help of her, whoever she was, whom Tom Fool had seen with him by the
hall door. She had guided him down my lord's stair, and thus avoided
the risk of crossing the paved court to the hall door within sight
of the warders of the main entrance. To her indubitably the young
roundhead had committed the ring for Dorothy. Here then was one
secret agent in the affair: was it likely there had been two? If
not, this woman was one and the same with the person who turned the
key upon Dorothy. She probably had been approaching the snare while
the traitress talked with the prisoner. What did her presence so
soon again in the vicinity of the turret-chamber indicate? Possibly
that her own chamber was near it.
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