She shuddered and glanced with aversion toward the broken coffin, and again tried to loosen her hands from mine. She looked at me with a burning anger in her face.
"Let me go!" she panted. "Madman! liar!--let me go!"
I released her instantly and stood erect, regarding her fixedly.
"I am no madman," I said, composedly; "and you know as well as I do that I speak the truth. When I escaped from that coffin I found myself a prisoner in this very vault--this house of my perished ancestry, where, if old legends could be believed, the very bones that are stored up here would start and recoil from YOUR presence as pollution to the dead, whose creed was HONOR."
The sound of her sobbing breath ceased suddenly; she fixed her eyes on mine; they glittered defiantly.
"For one long awful night," I resumed, "I suffered here. I might have starved--or perished of thirst. I thought no agony could surpass what I endured! But I was mistaken: there was a sharper torment in store for me. I discovered a way of escape; with grateful tears I thanked God for my rescue, for liberty, for life! Oh, what a fool was I! How could I dream that my death was so desired!--how could I know that I had better far have died than have returned to SUCH a home!"
Her lips moved, but she uttered no word; she shivered as though with intense cold. I drew nearer to her.
"Perhaps you doubt my story?"
She made no answer. A rapid impulse of fury possessed me.
"Speak!" I cried, fiercely, "or by the God above us I will MAKE you! Speak!" and I drew the dagger I carried from my vest. "Speak the truth for once--'twill be difficult to you who love lies--but this time I must be answered! Tell me, do you know me? DO you or do you NOT believe that I am indeed your husband--your living husband, Fabio Romani?"
She gasped for breath. The sight of my infuriated figure--the glitter of the naked steel before her eyes--the suddenness of my action, the horror of her position, all terrified her into speech. She flung herself down before me in an attitude of abject entreaty. She found her voice at last.
"Mercy! mercy!" she cried. "Oh, God! you will not kill me? Anything--anything but death; I am too young to die! Yes, yes; I know you are Fabio--Fabio, my husband, Fabio, whom I thought dead--Fabio--oh!" and she sobbed convulsively. "You said you loved me to-day--when you married me! Why did you marry me? I was your wife already--why--why? Oh, horrible, horrible! I see--I understand it all now! But do not, do not kill me, Fabio--I am afraid to die!"