'Then it was despite myself. The thought that you planned evil against me I have ever cast out and abhorred. Why it was said of you, alas, I know not.' 'What proof was given?' asked Basil, gazing fixedly at her. 'None.' Her accent did not satisfy him; it seemed to falter. 'Was nothing said,' he urged, 'to make credible so black an untruth?' Veranilda stood motionless and silent. 'Speak, I beseech you!' cried Basil, his hands clasped upon his breast. 'Something there is which shadows your faith in my sincerity. God knows, I have no right to question you thus--I, who let my heart be poisoned against you by a breath, a nothing. Rebuke me as you will; call me by the name I merit; utter all the disdain you must needs feel for a man so weak and false--' His speech was checked upon that word. Veranilda had arrested him with a sudden look, a look of pain, of fear. 'False?' fell from her lips. 'Can _you_ forget it, O Veranilda? Would that I could!' 'In your anger,' she said, 'as when perchance you were already distraught with fever, you spoke I know not what. Therein you were not false to me.' 'False to myself; I should have said. To you, never, never! False to my faith in you, false to my own heart which knew you faithful; but false as men are called who--' Again his voice sank. A memory flashed across him, troubling his brow. 'What else were you told?' he asked abruptly. 'Can it be a woman's name was spoken? You are silent. Will you not say that this thought, also, you abhorred and rejected?' The simple honesty of Veranilda's nature would not allow her to disguise what she thought. Urging question after question, with ardour irresistible, Basil learnt all she had been told by Marcian concerning Heliodora, and, having learnt it, confessed the whole truth in utter frankness, in the plain, blunt words dictated by his loathing of the Greek woman with whom he had once played at love. And, as she listened, Veranilda's heart grew light; for the time before her meeting with Basil seemed very far away, and the tremulous passion in his voice assured her of all she cared to know, that his troth pledged to her had never suffered wrong. Basil spoke on and on, told of his misery in Rome whilst vainly seeking her; how he was baffled and misled; how at length, in despair, he left the city and went to his estate by Asculum. Then of the message received from Marcian, and how eagerly he set forth to cross the Apennines, resolved that, if he could not find Veranilda, at least he would join himself with her people and fight for their king; of his encounter with the marauding troop, his arrival, worn and fevered, at Aesernia, his meeting with Sagaris, their interview, and what followed upon it.