n also shook hands and it was all over.

She understood that she had been married by a special license, and that
she was now legally and irretrievably the wife of Amede Henri, Prince
d'Orleans, de Bourgogne and several other places and dependencies
abroad.

She also understood from what the bald-headed clergyman had spoken when
he stood before them in the church and read the marriage service that
she as the wife owed obedience to her husband in all things, for she had
solemnly sworn so to do. She herself, body and soul and mind, her goods
and chattels, her wealth and all belongings were from henceforth the
property of her husband.

Yes, she had sworn to all that, willingly, and there was no going back
on that, now or ever!

But, oh! how she wished it had been different!

Afterwards, when in the privacy of her own little room at Acol Court,
she thought over the whole of that long and dismal day, she oft found
herself wondering what it was through it all that had seemed so
terrifying to her, so strange, so unreal.

Something had struck her as weird: something which she could not then
define; but she was quite sure that it was not merely the unusual
chilliness of that rainy summer's day, which had caused her to tremble
so, when--in the vestry--her husband had taken her hand and kissed her.

She had then looked into his face, which--though the vestry was but ill
lighted by a tiny very dusty window--she had never seen quite so clearly
before, and then it was that that amazing sense of something awful and
unreal had descended upon her like a clammy shroud.

He had very swiftly averted his own gaze from her, but she had seen
something in his face which she did not understand, over which she had
pondered ever since without coming to any solution of this terrible
riddle.

She had pondered over it during that interminable journey back from
Dover to Acol. Her husband had not even suggested accompanying her on
her homeward way, nor did she ask him to do so. She did not even think
it strange that he gave her no explanation of the reason why he should
not return to his lodgings at Acol. She felt like a somnambulist, and
wondered how soon she would wake and find herself in her small and
uncomfortable bed at the Court.

The next day that feeling of unreality was still there; that sensation
of mystery, of something supernatural which persistently haunted her.

One thing was quite sure; that all joy had gone out of her life.