arly ready," answered the young duchess.
"And, Margaret," she added, "show this good woman out. And then, do not
return here until I ring."

The visitor courtesied and went to the door, where she was met by the
maid, who conducted her down stairs.

Salome locked and double-locked and bolted the doors leading from
her apartments to the front corridor, and then she retreated to her
dressing-room, alone with her terrible trial.

Who can conceive the mortal agony suffered by that young, overburdened
heart and overtasked brain.

Who can estimate the force of the conflict that raged in her bosom,
between her passion and her conscience? Between her love and her duty?
Between what she knew of her worshiped husband, from daily association,
and what she had just heard proved upon him by overwhelming testimony,
confirmed also by the evidence of her own too long discredited senses!

He--her Apollo--her ideal of all manly excellence--her archangel, as in
the infatuation of her passion she had called him--he a bigamist, and an
accomplice in the murder of her father!

It was incredible! incomprehensible! maddening!

Or surely it was some awful nightmare dream, from which she must soon
awake.

What should she do? How meet again the people below?

She would not look upon _his_ face again. She could not. She felt
that to do so would be perdition.

In the darkness of her despair a great temptation assailed her.

But we must leave her alone to wrestle with the demon, while we join the
wedding-party below.

CHAPTER XVI.

VANISHED.

After the withdrawal of the bride and her attendant from the
breakfast-table, the bridegroom and his friends remained a few moments
longer, and then joined Lady Belgrade and the bridesmaids in the
drawing-room.

They passed some fifteen or twenty minutes in pleasant social chat upon
the event of the morning, the state of the weather, and the political,
financial, or fashionable topics of the day.

In half an hour they felt disposed to yawn, and some surreptitiously
consulted their watches.

Then one of the bridesmaids, at the request of Lady Belgrade, sat down to
the piano and condescended to favor the company with a very fine wedding
march.

Three quarters of an hour passed, and then the Baron Von Levison--(Paul
Levison, the head of the great Berlin branch of the banking-house of
"Levison," had been ennobled in Germany, as his brother had been knighted
in England)--Baron Von Levi