couple, the procession left the vestry, and proceeded down the aisle.
Now there were more eyes, hundreds of eyes, staring with merciless gaze.
The bride was trembling with nervousness, her chin shaking like that of
a frightened child. All her life she had been snubbed and kept in the
background; terror of her conspicuous position for the time being
swamped her joy in her handsome spouse. The sound of her panting breath
came to Malham's ears; he hurried his pace in fear of another breakdown,
and the laces of the bridal train caught in the carved woodwork of a
pew.

There was a momentary pause while a bridesmaid came to the rescue, and
Malham, turning to discover the nature of the hindrance, felt an icy
chill spread down his spine. In the pew by his side, within touch of
his hand, stood Celia, tall and slim, gazing straight into his face.
Her hair glowed like flames round her colourless face, her lips were
parted, showing a gleam of teeth, her head was thrown back on the white
column of her throat,--each cherished detail of her beauty smote on
Malham with a separate pang, but it was the expression in her eyes which
chilled his blood. _What was the expression in her eyes_?

Malham's heart beat in sickening thuds. Was it a moment, or an hour,
during which he stood and stared back into those terrible eyes? To the
onlookers the pause was barely perceptible; to him it seemed endless as
eternity.

It was only when he was seated beside his bride in the carriage, and
Anne was sobbing against his shoulder, that Malham realised the meaning
of Celia's eyes.

They were dead eyes. They had _no_ expression!

The reception was a nightmare, but it came to an end at last, and Malham
and his bride bade good-bye to their friends, and started on the first
stage of their honeymoon. It had been arranged that they should remain
in town until the next morning, when they were to make an early start
for the Continent. They drove to a fashionable hotel, where a suite of
rooms had been secured for their use, and after a couple of hours' rest,
went through the ordeal of their first _tete-a-tete_ meal.

Malham felt like a man in a dream. He moved, he spoke, he ate, and
drank as might a machine wound up to perform certain actions, but he was
conscious of nothing but a pair of dead eyes gazing at him out of a
living face. There was only one feeling of which he was capable--a
feeling of fear--of deadly, overmastering fear.

Dinner ove