“Father,” answered Norbert, “I have obeyed your wishes, and she is now my wife.”

A gleam of terrible anguish passed over the Duke’s countenance; he raised his hands as though to shield his eyes from some grizzly spectre, and in tones of heartrending agony exclaimed:  “Too late!  Too late!”

He fell back in terrible convulsions, and in a moment was dead.  If, as has been often asserted, the veil of the hereafter is torn asunder, then the Duke de Champdoce had a glimpse into a terrible future.

CHAPTER XII.

“Rash word, rash deed.”

After her repulse by Norbert, Diana, with the cold chill of death in her heart, made her way back to the Chateau of the De Laurebourgs, over the same road which but a short time before she had traveled full of expectation and hope.  The sudden appearance of the Duke de Champdoce had filled her with alarm, but her imagination was not of that kind upon which unpleasant impressions remain for any long period; for after she had regained her room, and thrown aside her out-door attire, and removed all signs of mud-stains, she once more became herself, and even laughed a little rippling laugh at all her own past alarms.  Overwhelmed with the shame of her repulse, she had threatened Norbert; but as she reasoned calmly, she felt that it was not he for whom she felt the most violent animosity.  All her hatred was reserved for that woman who had come between her and her lover—­for Marie de Puymandour.  Some hidden feeling warned her that she must look into Marie’s past life for some reason for the rupture of her engagement with Norbert, though the banns had already been published.  This was the frame of mind in which Diana was when the Viscount de Mussidan was introduced to her, the friend of the brother whose untimely death had left her such a wealthy heiress.  He was tall and well made, with handsomely chiseled features; and, endowed with physical strength and health, Octave de Mussidan had the additional advantages of noble descent and princely fortune.  Two women, both renowned for their wit and beauty, his aunt and his mother, had been intrusted with the education which would but enable him to shine in society.

Dispatched to Paris, with an ample allowance, at the age of twenty, he found himself, thanks to his birth and connections, in the very center of the world of fashion.  At the sight of Mademoiselle de Laurebourg his heart was touched for the first time.  Diana had never been more charmingly fascinating than she was at this period.  Octave de Mussidan did not suit her fancy; there was too great a difference between him and Norbert, and nothing would ever efface from her memory the recollection of the young Marquis as he had appeared before her on the first day of their meeting in the Forest of Bevron, clad in his rustic garb, with the game he had shot dangling from his hand.  She delighted to feast her recollection,