"According to your own plans, Rossi is to marry you within a week, although a month ago he spoke of you in public as an unworthy woman. Will you be good enough to tell me how this miracle has come to pass?"
She laughed, and tried to carry herself bravely.
"If it is a miracle, how can I explain it?" she said.
"Then permit me to do so. He is going to marry you because he no longer thinks as he thought a month ago; because he believes he was wrong in what he said, and would like to wipe it out entirely."
"He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly; "that's why he is going to marry me."
At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as from a tomb.
"Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he could scarcely be heard.
"Told him what?" she said.
"The truth—the fact."
She caught her breath and was silent.