The bride was very pale, paler than she had ever been, even in those dread days when she stood always face to face with death.

In making the responses her voice faltered, fainted, and died away with every new effort.

No one would have thought from her look, tone or manner, that she was giving her hand, where her heart had so long and so entirely been bestowed.

She seemed rather like a victim forced unwillingly to the altar by despotism or by necessity, than a happy bride about to be united to the man of her choice.
At length the trial was over.

The benediction was pronounced, and the young husband sealed the sacred rites by a kiss on the cold lips of his youthful wife.
Friends crowded around with congratulations; but all who took the hand of Salome, Duchess of Hereward, felt its icy chill even through her glove and theirs.
"No wonder poor child," they said to themselves; "she is thinking of her father, murdered on her first appointed wedding-day." But it was not that.