hat the
marriage of the so recently and cruelly orphaned daughter might be as
private and decorous as it was intended to be.

Baron Von Levison, the head of the Berlin branch of the great European
banking firm of Levison, had come over to act the part of father to his
orphan niece, and stood near the chancel to give her away.

The Bishop of London, assisted by two clergymen, all in their sacred
robes of office, stood within the chancel to perform the marriage
ceremony.

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