d prompt, too, to avenge it.'

"'You will have nothing to avenge,' murmured Honora; 'that is all in the
past.'

"I prayed to Heaven she might be right, and ere long bowed in adieu and
left her. I saw neither herself nor any one else again till I entered
the Dudleigh mansion three days later to witness her nuptials."

CHAPTER XIV.

A CASSANDRA AT THE GATE.

"Miss Dudleigh, moved, perhaps, by the unpleasant _eclat_ which had
followed the broken-off marriage of her cousin, chose to celebrate her
own wedding in her own house, and with as little ceremony as possible.
Only her most intimate friends, therefore, were invited, but these were
numerous enough to fill the halls and most of the lower rooms.

"When I entered there was a sudden cessation of conversation; but this I
had expected. If anything could add to the interest of the occasion,
certainly it was my presence; and, feeling this, I made them all a
profound obeisance, and, neither shirking their glances nor inviting
them, I took my place in the spot I had chosen for myself, and waited,
with a face as impassive as a mask, but with a heart burning with fury
and love, not for the coming of the bride, but of her who in this hour
ought to have been standing at my side as my wife.

"But I miscalculated if I thought she would enter with them. Even her
bold and arrogant spirit shrank from a position so conspicuous, and it
was not till they had presented themselves and taken their places in
front of the latticed window so associated with my past, that I felt
that peculiar sensation which always followed the entrance of Marah into
the same room with myself, and, yielding to the force that constrained
me, I searched the throng with eager looks, and there, where the crowd
was thickest, and the shadow deepest, I saw her. She was gazing straight
at me, and there was in her great eyes a look which I did not then
understand, and about which I have since tortured myself by asking again
and again if it were remorse, entreaty, farewell, or despair that spoke
through it. Sometimes I have thought it was fear. Sometimes-- But why
conjecture? It was an unreadable expression to me then, and even in
remembrance it is no clearer. Whatever it betokened, my pride bent
before it, and a flood of the old feeling rushed over my heart, making
me quite weak for a moment.

"But I conquered myself, as far as all betrayal of my feelings was
concerned, and turning from the spot that so en