She stares at him with whitened lips, and a shudder of horror chills her heart. Such truth is stamped upon his face that it seems impossible to doubt. Yet she asks herself, with little, awsome chills creeping over all her frame, is it possible that she, Vera, has actually lain in the gloom and darkness of the grave? Has that warm, throbbing flesh, instinct with life and vitality, been closed around with the blackness of the coffin? Has the black earth been heaped upon her living form? What fearful mystery is this?
"Tell me," she says, almost piteously, "is it true that Vera Campbell died and was buried? Will you answer it?"
His face expresses the most honest surprise.
"Are you Vera Campbell, and pretend to doubt it?" he answers. "This is a mystery I cannot fathom. The girl, Vera, whom I made my wife by her mother's wish, committed suicide, and was buried in Glenwood. This I swear by this holy book," lifting a Bible lying on the table beside him, and pressing his lips upon it. "If you would go to America, Lady Fairvale, you would see the monument I erected in Glenwood to the memory of my wife!"
And again there is silence while Lady Vera, standing silently with little thrills of icy coldness creeping over her frame, shudders to herself. So they had buried her while she lay in that trance-like slumber. How had her father resurrected her, and why had he held it a secret?
Wondering at her silence, he speaks again.
"I have answered your question truly and fairly, Lady Vera. Let me ask you one in turn. Are you really ignorant of the fact that you have undoubtedly been buried alive?"
She shivers, palpably. All the warmth of the summer sunshine cannot keep back the icy winds that seem to blow over her like arctic waves.
"I never even imagined anything so horrible," she answers. "I distinctly remember my maddened attempt at suicide. There were two small vials in my mother's medicine chest. One meant death, the other sleep. I chose the poison, as I thought; drank it, and lay down to die. But I had made a mistake. I fell into a deep, narcotic sleep. I awakened in the dawn of another day and found myself in a small, humble room, watched over by a man who declared himself to be my father. I know no more than this."
"Yet he, undoubtedly, rescued you from the grave and concealed the fact from some motive of his own," Leslie Noble answers. "It was a mistaken kindness on his part. There are those who are ready to doubt your identity on the score of your ignorance of that strange event in your life, Lady Vera—some who would insinuate that you are an impostor and have no right to the title you bear. But I am not one of those carping disbelievers. I am quite convinced that you are really the Vera we believed to be dead so long, and I am ready to acknowledge you and to make reparation and atonement for the unconscious wrong I have done you."