s as naught
compared to that anger which seized and racked me.

I know not how the hours of this black day were made to come and go,
grinding me to dust and ashes in their passage, yet leaving me alive and
keen to suffer at the end.

A thousand times that day I lived in torment through the scene in which
the priest had doubtless come to play his part of joiner. The stage for
it would be the great room fronting south; the room my father used to
call our castle hall. For guests I thought there would be space enough
and some to spare, for, as you know, our Mecklenburg was patriot to the
core. But as to this, the bridegroom's troopers might fill out the tale,
and in my heated fancy I could see them grouped beneath the
candle-sconces with belts and baldrics fresh pipe-clayed, and shakos
doffed, and _sabretaches_ well in front. "A man full-grown--a soldier,"
she had said; and trooper-guests were fitting in such case.

From serving in a Catholic land I knew the customs of the Mother Church.
So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand
before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come
to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child
to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her
side, with his knee touching hers, this man who was a devil!

What wonder if I cursed and choked and cursed again when the maddening
thought of what all this should mean for my poor wounded Richard--and
later on, for Margery herself--possessed me? In which of these hot
fever-gusts of rage the thought of interference came, I know not. But
that it came at length--a thought and plan full-grown at birth--I do
know.

The pointing of the plan was desperate and simple. It was neither more
nor less than this: I knew the house and every turn and passage in it,
and when the hour should strike I said I should go down and skulk among
the guests, and at the crucial moment find or seize a weapon and fling
myself upon this bridegroom as he should kneel before the altar.

With strength to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it
might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so
the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab
as with the strength of ten.

Although it was most terribly over-long in coming, the end of that black
day did come at last, and with it Darius to fetch my supper and the
candles. You may b