“I am foolishly frightened,” she said.  “That man is faithful, and will keep watch.”  I thought it time to discover her wishes.

“Signorina,” said I, “you ask me to save you.  You do not say from what.  I can at least tell you that Nino Cardegna will be here in a day or two—­” At this sudden news she gave a little cry, and the blood rushed to her cheeks, in strange contrast with their deathly whiteness.  She seemed on the point of speaking, but checked herself, and her eyes, that had looked me through and through a moment before, drooped modestly under my glance.

“Is it possible?” she said at last, in a changed voice.  “Yes, if he comes, I think the Signor Cardegna will help me.”

“Madam,” I said, very courteously, for I guessed her embarrassment, “I can assure you that my boy is ready to give you his life in return for the kindness he received at your hands in Rome.”  She looked up, smiling through her tears, for the sudden happiness had moistened the drooping lids.

“You are very kind, Signor Grandi.  Signor Cardegna is, I believe, a good friend of mine.  You say he will be here?”

“I received a letter from him to-day, dated in Rome, in which he tells me that he will start immediately.  He may be here to-morrow morning,” I answered.  Hedwig had regained her composure, perhaps because she was reassured by my manner of speaking about Nino.  I, however, was anxious to hear from her own lips some confirmation of my suspicions concerning the baron.  “I have no doubt,” I continued presently, “that, with your consent, my boy will be able to deliver you from this prison—­” I used the word at a venture.  Had Hedwig suffered less, and been less cruelly tormented, she would have rebuked me for the expression.  But I recalled her to her position, and her self-control gave way at once.

“Oh, you are right to call it a prison!” she cried.  “It is as much a prison as this chamber hewed out of the rock, where so many a wretch has languished hopelessly; a prison from which I am daily taken out into the sweet sun, to breathe and be kept alive, and to taste how joyful a thing liberty must be!  And every day I am brought back, and told that I may be free if I will consent.  Consent!  God of mercy!” she moaned, in a sudden tempest of passionate despair.  “Consent ever to belong, body—­and soul—­to be touched, polluted, desecrated, by that inhuman monster; sold to him, to a creature without pity, whose heart is a toad, a venomous creeping thing—­sold to him for this life, and to the vengeance of God hereafter; bartered, traded, and told that I am so vile and lost that the very price I am offered is an honour to me, being so much more than my value.”  She came toward me as she spoke, and the passionate, unshed tears that were in her seemed to choke her, so that her voice was hoarse.

“And for what—­for what?” she cried, wildly, seizing my arm and looking fiercely into my eyes.  “For what, I say?  Because I gave him a poor rose; because I let him see me once; because I loved his sweet voice; because—­because—­I love him, and will love him, and do love him, though I die!”