onsent, it will be the worse for
you."

She would not have consented--she would have preferred death,
indeed--but for the insistence that the Duke used in private with her.
And so, half convinced that it would in some sort repair her honour,
the poor woman suffered herself to be led, more dead than living, to the
altar in the Duke's private chapel, and there, scarcely knowing what she
did, she became the wife of Captain Claudius von Rhynsault, the man she
had most cause to loathe and hate in all the world.

Rhynsault had ordered a great banquet to celebrate his nuptials, for on
the whole he was well satisfied with the issue of this affair. But as he
left the altar, his half-swooning bride upon his arm, the Duke in person
tapped his shoulder.

"All is not yet done," he said. "You are to come with me."

The bridal pair were conducted to the great hall of the Prinssenhof,
where there was a great gathering of the Court--to do honour to his
nuptials, thought the German captain. At the broad table sat two clerkly
fellows with quills and parchments, and by this table the Duke took
his stand, Arnault beside him--in peacock-blue to-day--and called for
silence.

"Captain von Rhynsault," he said gravely and quietly, "what you have
done is well done; but it does not suffice. In the circumstances of this
marriage, and after the revelation we have had of your ways of thought
and of honour, it is necessary to make provision against the future. It
shall not be yours, save at grave cost, to repudiate the wife you have
now taken."

"There is no such intent--" began Rhynsault, who misliked this homily.

The Duke waved him into silence.

"You are interrupting me," he said sharply. "You are a wealthy man,
Rhynsault, thanks to the favours I have heaped upon you ever since
the day when I picked you from your German kennel to set you where you
stand. Here you will find a deed prepared. It is in the form of a will,
whereby you bequeath everything of which you are to-day possessed--and
it is all set down--to your wife on your death, or on the day on which
you put her from you. Your signature is required to that."

The captain hesitated a moment. This deed would fetter all his future.
The Duke was unreasonable. But under the steady, compelling eyes of
Charles he moved forward to the table, and accepted the quill the clerk
was proffering. There was no alternative, he realized. He was trapped.
Well, well! He must make the best of it. He