A low sound that was half a sob and half a cry broke from her.

“Oh, no, no!” she muttered, again, incoherently—­“it cannot be!  It must be false—­it is some vile plot—­it cannot be true!  True!  Oh, Heaven! it would be too cruel, too horrible!”

I strode up to her.  I drew her hands away from her eyes and grasped them tightly in my own.

“Hear me!” I said, in clear, decisive tones.  “I have kept silence, God knows, with a long patience, but now—­now I can speak.  Yes! you thought me dead—­you had every reason to think so, you had every proof to believe so.  How happy my supposed death made you!  What a relief it was to you!—­what an obstruction removed from your path!  But—­I was buried alive!” She uttered a faint shriek of terror, and looking wildly about her, strove to wrench her hands from my clasp.  I held them more closely.  “Ay, think of it, wife of mine!—­you to whom luxury has been second nature, think of this poor body straightened in a helpless swoon, packed and pressed into yonder coffin and nailed up fast, shut out from the blessed light and air, as one would have thought, forever!  Who could have dreamed that life still lingered in me—­life still strong enough to split asunder the boards that inclosed me, and leave them shattered, as you see them now!”

She shuddered and glanced with aversion toward the broken coffin, and again tried to loosen her hands from mine.  She looked at me with a burning anger in her face.

“Let me go!” she panted.  “Madman! liar!—­let me go!”

I released her instantly and stood erect, regarding her fixedly.

“I am no madman,” I said, composedly; “and you know as well as I do that I speak the truth.  When I escaped from that coffin I found myself a prisoner in this very vault—­this house of my perished ancestry, where, if old legends could be believed, the very bones that are stored up here would start and recoil from your presence as pollution to the dead, whose creed was honor.”

The sound of her sobbing breath ceased suddenly; she fixed her eyes on mine; they glittered defiantly.

“For one long awful night,” I resumed, “I suffered here.  I might have starved—­or perished of thirst.  I thought no agony could surpass what I endured!  But I was mistaken:  there was a sharper torment in store for me.  I discovered a way of escape; with grateful tears I thanked God for my rescue, for liberty, for life!  Oh, what a fool was I!  How could I dream that my death was so desired!—­how could I know that I had better far have died than have returned to such a home!”

Her lips moved, but she uttered no word; she shivered as though with intense cold.  I drew nearer to her.

“Perhaps you doubt my story?”

She made no answer.  A rapid impulse of fury possessed me.

“Speak!” I cried, fiercely, “or by the God above us I will make you!  Speak!” and I drew the dagger I carried from my vest.  “Speak the truth for once—­’twill be difficult to you who love lies—­but this time I must be answered!  Tell me, do you know me?  Do you or do you not believe that I am indeed your husband—­your living husband, Fabio Romani?”