ious
move, a solitary wailing cry of mingled astonishment and despair went up
behind us; but before any of us could turn, and while my own heart stood
still, for I thought I recognized this veiled figure, the woman at the
altar raised her hand and pointed towards the bridegroom.

"Why does he hesitate?" she cried. "Does he not recognize the only woman
with whom he dare face God and man at the altar? Because I am already
his wedded wife, and have been so for five long years, does that make my
wearing of this veil amiss when he a husband, unreleased by the law,
dares enter this sacred place with the hope and expectation of a
bridegroom?"

It was Ruth Oliver who spoke. I recognized her voice as I had recognized
her apparel; but the emotions aroused in me by her presence and the
almost incredible claims she advanced were lost in the horror inspired
by the man she thus vehemently accused. No lost spirit from the pit
could have shown a more hideous commingling of the most terrible
passions known to man than he did in the face of this terrible
arraignment; and if Ella Althorpe, cowering in her shame and misery
half-way up the aisle, saw him in all his depravity at that instant as I
did, nothing could have saved her long-cherished love from immediate
death.

Yet he tried to speak.

"It is false!" he cried; "all false! The woman I once called wife is
dead."

"Dead, Olive Randolph? Murderer!" she exclaimed. "The blow struck in the
dark found another victim!" And pulling the veil from her face, Ruth
Oliver advanced to his side and laid her trembling hand with a firm and
decisive movement on his arm.

Was it her words, her touch, or the sound of the clock striking eight in
the great tower over our heads, which so totally overwhelmed him? As the
last stroke of the hour which was to have seen him united with Miss
Althorpe died out in the awed spaces above him, he gave a cry such as I
am sure never resounded between those sacred walls before, and sank in a
heap on the spot where but a few minutes previous he had lifted his head
in all the glow and pride of a prospective bridegroom.

XLI.

SECRET HISTORY.

It was hours before I found myself able to realize that the scene I had
just witnessed had a deeper and much more dreadful significance than
appeared to the general eye, and that Ruth Oliver, in her desperate
interruption of these treacherous nuptials, had not only made good her
prior claim to Randolph Stone as h