And again there is silence while Lady Vera, standing silently with little thrills of icy coldness creeping over her frame, shudders to herself. So they had buried her while she lay in that trance-like slumber. How had her father resurrected her, and why had he held it a secret? Wondering at her silence, he speaks again. "I have answered your question truly and fairly, Lady Vera. Let me ask you one in turn. Are you really ignorant of the fact that you have undoubtedly been buried alive?" She shivers, palpably. All the warmth of the summer sunshine cannot keep back the icy winds that seem to blow over her like arctic waves. "I never even imagined anything so horrible," she answers. "I distinctly remember my maddened attempt at suicide. There were two small vials in my mother's medicine chest. One meant death, the other sleep. I chose the poison, as I thought; drank it, and lay down to die. But I had made a mistake. I fell into a deep, narcotic sleep. I awakened in the dawn of another day and found myself in a small, humble room, watched over by a man who declared himself to be my father. I know no more than this." "Yet he, undoubtedly, rescued you from the grave and concealed the fact from some motive of his own," Leslie Noble answers. "It was a mistaken kindness on his part. There are those who are ready to doubt your identity on the score of your ignorance of that strange event in your life, Lady Vera--some who would insinuate that you are an impostor and have no right to the title you bear. But I am not one of those carping disbelievers. I am quite convinced that you are really the Vera we believed to be dead so long, and I am ready to acknowledge you and to make reparation and atonement for the unconscious wrong I have done you." "To make atonement--how?" Lady Vera asks him, with a curling lip and scornful eye. Her scorn disconcerts him for a moment. His face flushes and his eyes fall, then he rallies, facing her with assumed calmness and humility that but poorly hide the eagerness of his heart. "In the only way possible, of course," he answers. "By repudiating and putting aside the lady whom I married after your supposed death, and by installing you in your rightful place. Will you come home to me, Vera, my beautiful wife? Darnley House shall open wide its door to receive you, and there is no more beautiful home in London. It is elegant enough for you, even, my haughty princess." She stares at him speechless with anger and amazement. "Will you come to me, Vera?" he repeats, half opening his arms and speaking very tenderly. She retreats before him as he advances. Her face flames with anger. "How dare you--how dare you?" she pants, brokenly. "I scorn you, Leslie Noble! Surely you know that. Why, you are less to me than the dust beneath my feet." "I am your husband by your own confession," he answers, sullenly, and with the fire of baffled purpose blazing in his eyes.