not comfort me that my husband, without failing in good manners,
was taking the whole scene and company with a certain scarcely-veiled
contempt which I could not help but see.

And neither did it allay my uneasiness to glance at my father, where he
stood at the end of the room, watching, with a look of triumph in his
glistening black eyes, his proud guests coming up to me one by one, and
seeming to say to himself, "They're here at last! I've bet them! Yes,
by gough, I've bet them!"

Many a time since I have wondered if his conscience did not stir within
him as he looked across at his daughter in the jewels of the noble house
he had married her into--the pale bride with the bridegroom he had
bought for her--and thought of the mockery of a sacred union which he
had brought about to gratify his pride, his vanity, perhaps his revenge.

But it was all over now. I was married to Lord Raa. In the eyes equally
of the law, the world and the Church, the knot between us was
irrevocably tied.

MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD

I am no mystic and no spiritualist, and I only mention it as one of the
mysteries of human sympathy between far-distant friends, that during a
part of the time when my dear one was going through the fierce struggle
she describes, and was dreaming of frozen regions and a broken pen, the
ship I sailed on had got itself stuck fast in a field of pack ice in
latitude 76, under the ice barrier by Charcot Bay, and that while we
were lying like helpless logs, cut off from communication with the
world, unable to do anything but groan and swear and kick our heels in
our bunks at every fresh grinding of our crunching sides, my own mind,
sleeping and waking, was for ever swinging back, with a sort of yearning
prayer to my darling not to yield to the pressure which I felt so
damnably sure was being brought to bear on her.

M.C.

THIRD PART

MY HONEYMOON

THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTER

When the Bishop and Father Dan arrived, the bell was rung and we went in
to breakfast.

We breakfasted in the new dining-room, which was now finished and being
used for the first time.

It was a gorgeous chamber beblazoned with large candelabra, huge
mirrors, and pictures in gold frames--resembling the room it was
intended to imitate, yet not resembling it, as a woman over-dressed
resembles a well-dressed woman.

My father sat at the head of his table with the Bishop, Lady Margaret
and Aunt Bridget on his right, and mysel