After the short preliminary exhortation, the ceremony was commenced.  The bride was very pale, paler than she had ever been, even in those dread days when she stood always face to face with death.  In making the responses her voice faltered, fainted, and died away with every new effort.  No one would have thought from her look, tone or manner, that she was giving her hand, where her heart had so long and so entirely been bestowed.  She seemed rather like a victim forced unwillingly to the altar by despotism or by necessity, than a happy bride about to be united to the man of her choice.

At length the trial was over.  The benediction was pronounced, and the young husband sealed the sacred rites by a kiss on the cold lips of his youthful wife.

Friends crowded around with congratulations; but all who took the hand of Salome, Duchess of Hereward, felt its icy chill even through her glove and theirs.

“No wonder poor child,” they said to themselves; “she is thinking of her father, murdered on her first appointed wedding-day.”

But it was not that.  Salome had too clear a spiritual insight not to know that her father was more alive than he had been while on earth, and that he was bending down and blessing her, even there.

No; but the dark shadow of the approaching ill drew nearer and nearer.  She could not know what it was.  She could only feel it coming and chilling and darkening her soul.

After a few minutes passed in the vestry, during which the marriage of Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, Duke of Hereward, and Salome Levison was duly registered and signed and witnessed, the newly-married pair were at liberty to return home.

The young duke handed his youthful duchess into his own handsomely appointed carriage.

Baron Von Levison took her vacated place in the carriage with Lady Belgrade and the bridesmaids.

The few invited guests, being only the nearest family connections of the bride and bridegroom, got into their carriages and followed to the bride’s residence on Westbourne Terrace, where the wedding breakfast awaited.

There were now no decorated halls and drawing-rooms, no bands of music, no display of splendid bridal presents, no parade whatever.

To be sure, an elegant breakfast-table was laid for the guests.  It was decorated only with fragrant white flowers from the home conservatory, furnished with white Sevres china and silver, and provided with a luxurious and dainty repast.  That was all.  All magnificence and splendor of display was carefully avoided in the feast as in the ceremony.

Only ten in all sat down to the table, viz., the bride and bridegroom, two bridesmaids, two groomsmen, Lady Belgrade, Baron Von Levison, the Bishop of London, and the Rector of St. George’s.

A graver wedding party never was brought together.  Even the youthful bridesmaids and groomsmen, expected to be “the life of the company,” were awed into silence by the preponderance of age and clerical dignity in the little assembly, for the bishop was not ready with his usual harmless little jest, and the rector did not care to take precedence over his superior.