Talbot stood motionless, with a face of marble and an attitude perfectly rigid; not a nerve quivered as she looked into the muzzle of the rifle, but her lips moved as if she were murmuring a prayer. CHAPTER LI. IN WHICH AN INTERRUPTION OCCURS IN A MARRIAGE CEREMONY. Talbot stood; the rifle was levelled at her; Lopez had taken deadly aim; his finger was on the trigger; she felt that her last hour had come, and that naught could avail her now but prayer. Brooke was struggling like a madman. Two of the soldiers had been hurled to the floor; another was clinging to his neck; a fourth was savagely trying to gouge out his eyes. Lopez pulled the trigger. The report rang through the hall. At that very instant, as the fire and smoke went flashing and blazing at Talbot--or rather, the very instant before--a figure dashed toward her. It was Brooke. By one supreme and convulsive effort he had torn himself away from his assailants, and with one great bound had flung himself at Talbot. At the rush which he made she fell backward, and the next instant Brooke fell upon her. Talbot then struggled up to her feet, and through the dense clouds of smoke reached down to raise up Brooke. He was senseless. With a low moan like the cry of a suffering animal, Talbot threw herself upon the senseless form. From his forehead there trickled several streams of blood which fell to the floor in a pool. She pressed her lips again and again to the wound, and then through the dense smoke she rose and looked around, confronting Lopez with the blood of Brooke's wounds staining all her face. It was a face beautiful in its marble whiteness as the face of a statue of Athena; yet terrible in the fixed and stony horror of its eyes, and in the blood-streaks that covered it, and in the incarnate hate of its expression--terrible in all this as the Gorgon face of Medusa. [Illustration: "She Hurled The Breviary Upon The Floor."] Lopez shrank back: his vengeance was satisfied, his fury had all subsided, and there flashed through every nerve a thrill of horror. It was then to him as though the dead--the priest whom he had just slain--had sprung up by an immediate resurrection from death to punish him for such atrocious sacrilege. All the superstition of his Spanish nature now rolled in one wave over his soul, overwhelming it with panic fear. The dead! the dead! he thought--the priest with the angel face--murdered because he would not sin--it was he! But the angel face was now the awful head of a haunting and avenging demon. And now at this very instant, while the smoke was still hanging in dense folds half-way between floor and ceiling; while Brooke still lay in his blood; while Talbot still glared in fury upon Lopez; at this very moment there arose a wild cry--sudden, menacing, irresistible--by which the whole face of the scene was changed. "Viva el Rey!"