"Yet you could have trusted me," she said, with a gentle sigh of reproach.
"Had I told you, I could no longer have remained at the castle. It was not that I did not trust you—indeed, I longed to tell you, not only that but all the rest."
"The rest?" she repeated softly in a low voice that trembled; and again I felt her fingers on mine start.
"Yes. The secret at which even you did not guess. I can judge pretty much what these people have told you—that I am an adventurer and an ex-play-actor. There is a secret behind that which I have not shared with a single soul on earth; but I will tell you."
Then I told her plainly of my meeting with von Fromberg, the mistake under which I was first taken to Gramberg, and the chain of circumstances which had kept me from breaking silence as to my identity and had seemed to drive me into accepting the part that had been thrust upon me.
I did not dwell too strongly upon the one motive that had influenced me—the wish to save her from the plot against her safety. But she was quick to read it all; and maybe her feelings for me prompted her to give it exaggerated importance.
She listened almost in silence, merely asking a question here and there when some point was not clear, and at the close she sat thoughtful, and said sweetly:
"It means a great loss to me—and yet perhaps a greater gain."
I looked up with a question in my eyes.
"I have lost my cousin, it seems—surely the truest cousin that ever a woman had; but then I have gained a friend whose stanchness must be even greater than my cousin's, for there was no claim of kinship to motive his sacrifices for me. But, cousin or friend, you are still——" She did not finish the sentence.