How long she might have borne it and retained sanity is doubtful. It surely could not have been long. With the smallest gleam of sympathy it might have been possible to endure. But there was no sympathy. The gloom of her outlook from her windows, the awesome grandeur of her rooms, the cold antagonism of those who waited upon her as prison warders,--all these things aggravated her trouble, just as they were calculated to aggravate.

Then in the very depths of her despairing misery there suddenly shone out a vague, flickering light of hope. It was no less than a stealthy and secret visit from Ludwig von Salzinger. It came in the night. Vita had abandoned sleeping at night fearing lest the murder would be committed during the hours of darkness. She had allowed her imagination to run riot till she almost came to fear her own shadow.

She was sitting in an upright chair. She was gazing straight before her with eyes staring upon the door. Such was her terror of the night that she had been reduced to this impotent watching. Her thought was teeming, going over and over again every horrible fancy a distorted brain could conjure. Then suddenly, in the midst of it all, she started. Her straining eyes dilated. She leapt from her seat and sprang behind her chair, grasping its back, prepared to defend herself. The door was slowly and silently opening.

Widely ajar it stopped. The next instant a head was thrust round it, a square head with a shock of close-cut hair. The woman breathed a sigh, but remained ready to defend herself. She had recognized Ludwig von Salzinger.

The man recognized her att.i.tude, and signed to her to remain silent.

His warning had instant effect. Vita drew another sigh, and her grip upon the chair-back relaxed. With eyes wide with doubt and fear she watched the man's movements. They were stealthy and secret.

He thrust the door further open. Quickly and silently he stepped into the room. Then, with the door still ajar, he gazed back cautiously down the corridor beyond, in both directions. Having satisfied himself he closed the door with the greatest care and came towards her.

"If you speak," he whispered, "don't raise your voice, or--we shall be overheard."

"What have you come for?" demanded Vita, nevertheless obedient to his caution.

The man's brows went up and his eyes were urgent.

"Why, to get you out of this," he said quickly. "Do you think I can stand by while that devil Von Berger does you, a woman, to death? You, the woman I love--have always loved? G.o.d! I hate that man," he added, and an unmistakable ring of truth sounded in his final words. "Look here, Vita, I'm part of this diabolical machinery, I know; I can't help it; but to submit to the murder of a woman--you--G.o.d! I can't do it--if it costs me my own life. Oh, yes, I know what you'll think. You know the discipline. You know that I was forced into a.s.sisting in bringing you here, under orders I dared not disobey. I know all that, and you must think of me as you will, but I love you--madly--and I'll not consent to anything that threatens your life. I tell you, I've done with it all--all--our country. I'm going to get out of it all and flee to America, and--take you with me. You'll come with me? Say you'll come with me, and together we'll outwit this devil of a man. You've done nothing, nothing on earth to warrant the punishment he's preparing for you. Your father--that's different. But you--you--oh, it's horrible.

Ach! I could kill that man when I think of it, and all he has said to me yesterday of his devil's plans."

While he was speaking it seemed to Vita that it must be some angel talking disguised in the angular, hard exterior of this Prussian. Every nerve in her body which had been so straining seemed suddenly to have relaxed. It seemed as though years of suffering had been suddenly lifted from her poor tortured brain. She recalled how from the beginning she had thought that if hope there were for her it must lie in this very Von Salzinger who had been disgraced through her father's and her agency. She gazed upon him now in wonder, and was half inclined to weep with grat.i.tude and relief.

But she restrained herself. And quite suddenly she remembered something else. She remembered the man who claimed her love, and she remembered the love this man was now offering her. The relief of the moment changed to doubt, and, finally, to a renewed despair.

There was only one course open to her, and she adopted it frankly and without restraint. She shook her head.

"I--honor you for the sacrifice you would make, but I'm afraid it's useless. Besides, I feel it would be impossible to defeat these people.

I must tell you, and by doing so I may lose forever your good-will. I do not love you. All the love I have to give has pa.s.sed from my keeping----"

"Ruxton Farlow." There was a sharp, brutal ruthlessness in the manner in which Von Salzinger broke in.

Vita shrank at the tone.

"Yes," she said. "I love Ruxton Farlow, and have pledged myself to be his wife."

"Wife?" There was a smile in the man's eyes which did not conceal his jealous pa.s.sion. "What chance have you of becoming his wife? None.

There is only one chance--your escape from here. Your escape from here can only be contrived by me. Am I--I going to risk my life, and all my future, to hand over the woman I love to--Ruxton Farlow? Vita, I am only a man--a mere human man. I will risk all for you. I will dare even the vengeance of Von Berger if you but promise me. But no power on earth can make me stir a hand to deliver up all I care for in the world to--Ruxton Farlow."

The frank, ruthless honesty of the man's denial was not without its appeal to Vita. She even smiled a faint, gentle smile.

"It is as I said--useless. It is only as I could have expected. I could not hope it would be otherwise. I love Ruxton Farlow."

"Whom you can never hope to see again." Again came that savage crudeness of method which Vita recognized as part of the man. Then his eyes lit with a deep, primitive pa.s.sion. "Oh, yes, I must seem brutal, a devil, like that Von Berger. Maybe I am, but I can see plain sense.

In less than a week you will die here, murdered. How, I can only guess at. Von Berger knows no mercy. Your father is surrounded at Dorby, and will suffer a similar fate. All your plans and schemes will be frustrated. The works at Dorby are even now destroyed. There is no power on earth that can give you to this man you say you love. Well? Is not life still sweet to you? Is not your father's escape also something to you? I tell you I can contrive these things. All I ask is that you will marry me. Your solemn pledge. I love you, and will teach you to love me and forget this Englishman. It is madness to refuse. It is your one single chance of life, and you would fling it away for a shadow, a dream which can never be realized."

There was something in the man's manner which appealed to Vita. Perhaps it was the rugged brutality of his force. The repugnance in which she had held him had lessened. To her his genuineness was unmistakable. And he was honest enough to make no claim to generosity in the course he was prepared to adopt at her bidding.

Von Salzinger saw something of the effect he had achieved upon her and resolutely thrust home the advantage.

"Vita," he said, lowering his voice still more, but losing nothing of the urgency of his manner, "I have a plan whereby I can save you both--your father and you. Think of him, that great, but misguided man, who has lavished a world of affection upon you, and to whom you are more than devoted. Can you let him die? Think how he will die under Von Berger's hands. I tell you, Vita, better endure the agony of death at the hands of a common murderer a hundred times than be left at the mercy of that man. Even the torture of the old Inquisition might be preferable. He has neither soul nor conscience. And what does it mean to achieve this safety for you both? It means the sacrifice of your love for this Englishman. G.o.d! Is it so great a sacrifice when it can never be fulfilled? A pa.s.sing dream which must end in the tragedy of your murder. You say you have no love. I ask for none. That will come.

I will teach you a love which this Englishman could never have inspired. And I can give you back your life, and your father's life, in the great country across the Atlantic. Every detail of my plans are complete, but it must be now or never. Do you still refuse? Do you still desire to sacrifice your father to this selfish dream which can never be fulfilled?"

The woman's eyes were yearning. A great struggle looked out of their grey depths into the pa.s.sion-lit eyes of the man. The hope, oh, the hope of it all! But the price was the price of all that a woman looks forward to in life.

"Do you swear to me that my father shall be saved?" she demanded, in a low tone which thrilled to jubilance every sense in the man's body.

He flung out his arms.

"He shall leave this country with you. The fulfillment of your solemn word shall not be required of you till you are both safe across the water. If we fail--then you have sacrificed nothing. Can I say fairer?

Can you doubt my honesty of purpose after that? Ach! it maddens me with alarm and impatience to see you hesitate. For you it is safety--life.

For me I risk all--everything--for a wife who has no love to give me.

If I fail your present lot is nothing to what mine will be. If I hate Von Berger he has no love for me, and--he is not human."

But still Vita hesitated. It was not that she doubted this man, though she knew she had little enough reason to trust him. It was the love for the man of her choice holding and claiming her. She strove to set it aside. She tried to apply reason. But it would not be denied, and it elbowed reason at every turn.

What was life without this love of hers? No, it was nothing. Would it matter if death came upon her and left her cold? No. It would even be preferable to the life of terrible regret which Von Salzinger offered her. Her father--she caught her breath. It was the one thought which her love could not thrust aside. It was in her power to save him--if she would.

The struggle went on. It shone in her eyes, it was displayed in the panting rise and fall of her bosom. The appeal of it was too great. To leave him to his fate would be the vilest selfishness. This man had promised that he should leave the country with them--before she became his wife.

She looked up. A burning excitement shone in her eyes.

"Can you communicate with my father?" she asked.

The man shook his head.

"Then how can you--save him?" she demanded sharply. "I do not know where he is, and if I did wild horses would not drag his whereabouts from me--even for the purpose of saving his life."

But her words did not offend.

"You do not trust me," returned the man, with a tolerant shake of the head. "I cannot blame you either. I must prove my sincerity--later.

Meanwhile the matter is simple enough. Give me your solemn pledge that you will become my wife as soon as we safely land across the water, you, your father and me. Then I will show you."

For another few silent moments the struggle in Vita's heart went on.

Now it was a struggle of doubt and credulity. All other feeling had yielded in that earlier struggle. Dare she trust this man? Dare she?

But he was asking nothing until their safety had been a.s.sured. His seemed the greater risk, unless this were some diabolical plot with his superior, Von Berger. She could not reason it out. Reason was beyond her. Her father's safety lay in the balance. She forgot self for the time. So she thrust her finger upon the scale.

"I solemnly pledge myself under the conditions you name," she said in low tones.

The joy in the man's hard eyes was unmistakable, and Vita, witnessing it, understood that it was real, genuine.

"Then listen," he cried. "Communication with your father will be simple and safe. We do not need his whereabouts. I will dictate a letter to you--a letter of our plans and instructions. We will beat Von Berger at his own game, and once we are in America we can snap our fingers at the whole race. I will tell you now Von Berger threatened me yesterday again. He it was who deprived me of my command at Borga. He it was who superseded me over here. He it is who has given me the life of a cur ever since. Now I shall pay him in a way he little suspects. I will dictate this letter for you, Vita, and when it is written you will address it to your father and enclose it under cover to Sir Andrew Farlow at Dorby Towers. He will see that it reaches your father. You will see how sure is my plan. No matter into whose hands that letter falls it cannot betray his whereabouts to any one."

And Vita was finally convinced. She was making her sacrifice for the life and liberty of her father, and through all the pains and hopelessness of yielding up her love for Ruxton she had the wholly inadequate a.s.surance that, whatever it cost her, it was her simple duty for which even Ruxton himself would never blame her.

CHAPTER XXIII