ut she stopped me.

"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