But surely I
need say no more. It is surely sufficient to convince you that if the
truth were spoken, the revelations would be distinctly awkward."
"For whom?" he asked, opening his eyes.
"For you. Come, Baron," I said, "can we not yet speak frankly?"
But he was silent for a moment, a fact which was in itself proof that my
pointed argument had caused him to reconsider his intention of sending
me under escort back to that castle of terror.
If my journey there was in order to meet my love, I would not have
cared. It was the ignorance of her whereabouts or of her fate that held
me in such deep, all-consuming anxiety. Each hour that passed increased
my fond and tender affection for her. And yet what irony of
circumstance! She had been cruelly snatched from me at the very moment
that freedom had been ours.
I think it was well that I assumed that air of defiance with the man who
had ground Finland beneath his heel. He was unused to it. No one dared
to go against his will, or to utter taunt or threat to him.
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