"But I am not getting well—yet. That is what Doctor Mellish says, and that is why I must talk. Oh, Ruxton, can't you understand? I can never get well until I have told you—told you all that is on my mind. Dearest, dearest, I have wronged you, oh, how I have wronged you, and all because I am a coward, a miserable wretched coward who dared not face the death which they had marked out for me. It is that—that which brought about poor father's death. It is that which made me throw aside the love which was all the world to me, and promise to marry the man who pretended that he was about to save my wretched life."
"Von Salzinger?"
The question came with unerring instinct, but the coldness for herself Vita had dreaded was lacking.
"Yes," she said, in a childlike, frightened way.
"Tell it me. Tell it me all. I have been waiting all these weeks to learn the truth of all that happened to you—of all you have been made to suffer by those devils. Tell me everything, from the moment I left you to come up here to await your father's arrival."
His manner was so gentle, yet so firm. His eyes still held the warm smile with which he had greeted her. Vita's courage stole back into her veins, and her poor, hammering heart slackened its beatings, and her thoughts became less chaotic.
Ruxton waited with infinite patience. Time was for them alone just now. He had no desire to lose one moment of it.
Presently in a low hurried voice Vita began her story. She made no attempt to convey to him the terror through which she had passed. Yet it was all there. It lay under every word she uttered. It found expression in the brilliancy of her eyes, and the heated color which leapt to her thin cheeks. Ruxton read it all as if he were witnessing the whole action of the scenes she was describing. He not only read it, but something of a sympathetic dread swept through him, and his heart set him wondering how his poor troubled love had managed to survive the horror of all she must have endured.
Vita told him of Von Berger's coming, silently, secretly to Redwithy, and the way in which he had forced her to embark on that journey over the wild moorlands into the heart of Somersetshire. Then she told him of the imprisonment in the dreadful valley. She hurried on to the scene when Von Berger had warned her of her condemnation to death. After that she paused, gathering her courage for what was next to come. Her eyes gazed yearningly into her lover's now serious face. Her courage was ebbing fast. Then came the heartening tones of his voice.
"Tell it all, dearest. You have nothing to fear. Perhaps I can guess it."