She was the first, poor child, to discover the dead body of her father, you know," said Lady Belgrade.
"I do not forget that circumstance, or what distress it may yet cause her," replied the young duke.
And very soon after he took leave and went away.
Lady Belgrade's task in keeping the day's papers from the sight of Salome Levison was easier than she had anticipated.
Salome, deeply interested and absorbed in the final preparations for her marriage, did not even think of the newspapers, much less ask for them.
The bridal day dawned, once more, for the heiress of Lone.
Salome, with her attendant, was up early.

The young girl, since her departure from Lone Castle, the scene of her father's murder, and her arrival at Elmhurst House, and occupations with her wedding preparations, had wonderfully recovered her health and spirits.
Yet on this, her bridal day, she arose with a heavy heart.

A vague dread of impending evil weighed upon her spirits.
This occasion might well have brought back vividly cruelly to her memory, that fatal bridal morn when, going to invoke her father's presence and blessing on her marriage, she found him lying stiff and stark in the crimson pool of his own curdled blood.

She had no father here on earth, now, to give her to the man she loved, and to bless her union with him.
That, in itself might have been enough to account for the gloom that darkened her wedding day.

But that was not all.