'Why do you again ask me that question?' she said gently, but no longer timidly. 'Why do you look at me so? Surely,' her voice sank, 'you could not have let me feel so happy if Basil were dead?'
'He lives.'
'Then why do you look so strangely at me? Ah, he is a prisoner?'
'Not so. No man's liberty is less in danger.'
She clasped her hands before her. 'You make me suffer. I was so light of heart, and now—your eyes, your silence. Oh, speak, lord Marcian!'
'I have hidden the truth so long because I knew not how to utter it. Veranilda, Basil is false to you.'
Her hands fell; her eyes grew wider in wonder. She seemed not to understand what she had heard, and to be troubled by incomprehension rather than by a shock of pain.
'False to me?' she murmured. 'How false?'
'He loves another woman, and for her sake has turned to the Greeks.'
Still Veranilda gazed wonderingly.