The Unseen Bridegroom; Or, Wedded For a WeekFleming, May Agnes
General
The Unseen Bridegroom; Or, Wedded For a Week
Fleming, May Agnes
Fiction
Another dreary interval, and then for the third time came Sarah bearing
a tray.
"Your supper, miss." said Sarah, going through the formula. "I hope you
liked your dinner."
"Oh, take it away!" cried Millie, twisting her fingers. "I don't want
any supper--I'm going crazy, I think! Oh, what a hard, flinty, unfeeling
heart you must have, you wicked young woman!"
Sarah looked at her compassionately.
"It is hard, I know. But why didn't you do as master wished you, and get
away?"
"Marry him! How dare you? I wish I could poison him! I'd do that with
the greatest pleasure."
"Then you must stay here, miss, for weeks and weeks, months and months,
and every day be like this. Your friends will never find you--never!"
"Sarah, look here! I shall be dead in a week, and I'll haunt you--I vow
I will! I'll haunt you until I make your life a misery to you!"
Sarah smiled quietly.
"I am not afraid, miss. You're a great deal too young and too healthy to
die; and you won't kill yourself, for life is too sweet, even in prison.
The best thing you can do is to marry master, and be restored to your
friends."
"Sarah Grant--if that be your name," said Mollie, with awful
calmness--"go away! if you only come here to insult me like that,
don't come here at all."
Sarah courtesied respectfully, and immediately left. But her words had
made their mark. In spite of Mollie's appealing dignity, any avenue of
escape--even that--was beginning to took inviting.
"Suppose I went through the form of a ceremony with this man?" mused
Mollie. "It wouldn't mean anything, you know, because I did it upon
compulsion; and, immediately I got out, I should go straight and marry
Sir Roger. But I won't do it--of course, I won't! I'll be imprisoned
forever before I yield!"
But you know it has got to be a proverb, "When a woman hesitates, she is
lost." Mollie had begun to hesitate, and Mollie was lost.
All that long night she never slept a wink. She lay awake, tossing and
tumbling on the bed, or pacing up and down the floor, in a sort of
delirious fever. And--
"If I thought for certain sure he would let me go after the sham
ceremony was performed, I would marry him," was the conclusion she had
arrived at by morning. "No matter what happens, nothing can be half so
bad as this."
It was morning, though Mollie did not know it, when she threw herself on
the bed, and for the second time fell asleep. And sleeping, she dreamed.
She was standing up before the minister, to be married to the masked
man. The ceremony went on--Miriam was bride-maid and Sir Roger Trajenna
gave her away. The ceremony ended, the bridegroom turned to salute the
bride. "But first I must remove my mask," he said, in a strangely
familiar voice; and lifting it off, Mollie saw smiling down upon her the
most beautiful face ever mortal were, familiar as the voice, yet leaving
her equally unable to place it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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