He did not finish the sentence, for Danira interrupted him. Now she at last found words, but they sounded like the outcry of a tortured prisoner who can no longer endure the rack.
"No more! Spare your insults. You are speaking of--my brother."
She hurled the word at him so passionately, yet with such convincing truth that doubt was impossible. Nor did Gerald doubt, but he seemed fairly stunned by the unexpected disclosure, and almost mechanically repeated:
"Your brother?"
"Stephan Hersovac--yes! I saw and talked with him that night; with him and no one else."
Gerald involuntarily uttered a sigh of relief. He did not know himself why a load suddenly seemed to fall from his breast. The worst fact, the treachery still existed; but he had a vague feeling that he could forgive even this sooner than the other, which had aroused his contempt.
"Then, of course, I beg your pardon," he said. "I could not possibly suspect that a brother and sister would surround their meetings with such secrecy."
"Is it my fault that my brother dares not venture to approach me openly?" asked Danira sullenly. "He was implicated in the affair which delivered young Obrevic into your hands; the same fate threatens him if he shows himself here."
"Yet he ventures into the immediate vicinity of the city. Was that really done only to see a sister who has become so much a stranger to him, for whom he has never inquired, about whom he has never troubled himself?"
Gerald's tone was very different from before, but he had retained the same earnestness, and the look which strove to read the young girl's features was so grave and searching that she shrank from it.