her head for a moment, it seemed to him that her eyebrows also were dark and strongly marked. What had happened? What was the meaning of this enigma? Had he been fooled? He listened eagerly to the words of the priest, trying to discover some clue to the mystery; but he was unacquainted with the service and with the language in which it was conducted, and he had no prayer-book. He gathered that some question was being asked of the bridegroom; but strain his ears as he would, he could not distinguish in it the name of Sophie von Staubach, while for one awful instant he was haunted by the dread that he had heard the words Ottilie Ivanovna. A moment or two more, and his fear was confirmed, for the question addressed to the bride was answered, not in the shrill Low German accents of Fräulein von Staubach, but in the clear decided tones of Princess Ottilie. Cyril was standing quietly by, while his brother’s bride was married to another man before his eyes! He sprang forward, but a hand laid upon his shoulder on either side held him back. He was gripped by the two stalwart Dardanians between whom he was standing. “Monsieur must not disturb the ceremony,” said one of them in bad French; and Cyril, seeing that he was overmatched, resisted the temptation to disturb the ceremony to some purpose by a shout proclaiming the falseness of the bride, and remained mute and motionless throughout the protracted rite, with its prayers and incense, its presentation of the Common Cup, and its crowning and marching round the dais, although during the whole time the thought was forcing itself into his mind that Caerleon must have known of all this. The fact that he had been looking forward to such a _dénoûment_ explained both his willingness to enter into the engagement at all, and his callousness with regard to his _fiancée_, while his anxiety and misery throughout the past week were accounted for by the uncertainty of his position. And Princess Ottilie! Cyril ground his teeth as he remembered her tormenting doubts as to Caerleon’s affection, and how he had comforted her, while all the time she had been carrying on this complicated train of deception. But, after all, her moral turpitude was nothing to that of Caerleon. Cyril, the shrewd, the far-sighted, the diplomatist, had been duped, and by the brother whom he had always regarded as an honest simpleton, whose every thought he believed that he knew. It may seem a paradox to say that when Cyril’s first rage had cooled, the effect of his discovery was to heighten very considerably his respect for Caerleon, but so it was. The man by whom he had been deceived in this way must be possessed of a certain amount of brains.