“My father would get me the earth if I fancied it. And you may believe me, if he could see you dead rather than my wife, it would suit him equally well, take it or leave it.” For the first time there was a threat in his voice. Where did she get her courage, that she never so much as shrank as he leaned over her? “To-morrow you can go to the asylum, or marry me! After to-morrow I won’t try to save you. For all I care you can do both!” The words were so easily said, so sinister, that nothing but the scrap of paper in her hand kept her from crying out. “Scream if you choose,” he said, seeing her tightened lips; “there is no one to hear you. Think, and try, and place, you will see there is no one to help you but me. Oh, Beryl, is it so hard to trust me! You make me brutal, because you make me despair of helping you----” “Liar! murderer!” she said in his face. For three fierce sentences he had dropped his mask, and she knew there was no love in him, but only most evil passion. She wrenched away from the hand he stretched out to seize her, and ran from the room. For once her own was empty. Mrs. Fuller was in the kitchen making ready a decent meal with furious, incapable fingers. Had she been able she would have poisoned the man who forced her to be a servant in his house. Beryl knelt by the fire, and unrolled the paper, all creased from her hot clasp. The next instant she threw it in the fire. It was all a trap. That hand she thought she knew must have been another’s like enough to serve, for the paper held only one sentence, in English, that the madman did not know: “Do all they tell you.” Dull, lifelessly, Beryl watched it turn to ashes; saw Mrs. Fuller come in and lay a white gown on the bed. And Mrs. Fuller was crying, “Beryl,” and she threw her arms around the motionless girl, “marry him. Give in. Don’t you see?” she pointed to the bed, “it’s a wedding-dress,” she sobbed, for she was frightened for herself now. “It will do very well,” said Beryl Corselas, with stiff lips, “for a shroud.” CHAPTER XXXIX. TAKEN UNAWARES. “You have a chapel?” asked Father Maurice. He was an abstemious man; his vile dinner had not troubled him. Indeed, if he had not been afraid to risk weakness, he would not have eaten a crust in this house. “Yes.” The late owners of the place had been Catholics. “But it is disused; in sad repair.” “It is the only place for a marriage,” said the priest, and Raimond smiled, remembering the inn parlor in which this very man had married him to Andria Heathcote. “If you will allow me and provide me with some candles, I will go and prepare it early in the morning. You wished to have the wedding at seven?” He looked at Raimond. “At six. I should have liked you to have seen the bride to-night, but----” he laughed, “well, she was shy! I could not induce her to come down.”