"Bonnibel, on the night when I presumed to lock you into your chamber you were about to fly from me--to what fate I know not, but--I feared the worst. Think of the shame, the disgrace, the agony I must have endured from your desertion! Can you wonder that I took stringent measures to prevent you from carrying your wild project into execution? I would have laid you _dead_ at my feet before you should have broken my heart and made me a target for the scorn of the world." She did not flinch as he uttered the emphatic words and looked keenly into her face. She thought of herself vaguely as of one lying dead at the feet of that stern, old, white-haired man, yet the passing thought came to her indifferently as to one who was bearing the burden of a "life more pathetic than death." She felt no anger rising within her at the threat. Only a faint, stifled yearning awoke within her for a moment as his stern voice evoked a vision of the rest and peace of the grave. "You see how strongly I feel on this subject, my wife," he continued, after a long pause, "yet even now you shall go free if you will give me your sacred word of honor, by the memory of your father, that you will not desert me--that you will not leave me!" Silence fell--a long, painful silence. He stood quite still, looking down at her pale face, and waiting for her answer with quickened heart-beats. For her, she seemed transformed to a statue of marble only for the quick throbs that stirred the filmy lace folded over her breast. She stood quite still, her eyes drooping from his, a look of pitiful despair frozen on the deathly pallor of her face. Outside they could hear a soft wind sighing among the flowers and kissing the blue waves of the bay. Within, the fragrance of an orange tree, blooming in a niche, came to them with almost sickening oppressiveness. Still she made no sign of answer. "Bonnibel," he said, and his hoarse, strained voice fell so unnaturally on the stillness that he started at its strange sound, "Bonnibel, my darling little wife, you will give me that promise?" She shivered through all her frame as if those pleading words had broken her trance of silence. "Do not ask me," she said, faintly, "I cannot!" "You will not give me that little promise, Bonnibel?" "_I cannot_," she moaned, sinking into a chair and hiding her face in her hands. "You are determined to leave me, then, if you can?" he exclaimed in a voice of blended horror and reproach. "_I must_," she reiterated. "Then tell me _why_ you must go away, Bonnibel. What is this fatal secret that is driving you forth into exile? This mystery will drive me mad!" She removed her hands a moment, and looked up at him with sad, wistful eyes, and a face crimson with painful blushes.