His white hand went into his breast, and the priest heard the click of a weapon. With a throbbing heart and faltering voice he began to mumble forth the words of the marriage service. Bowles and his master held Jaquelina firmly between them. Gerald Huntington made every response in a loud, clear, triumphant voice; but Jaquelina's head drooped on her breast, while her whole slight frame was benumbed by a sick and shuddering horror. A terrible hopeless despair was stamped upon her white and haggard features. "I pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," said the priest's feeble, quivering voice at last, and the new-made bride drooped forward and fell like one dead at the feet of her lawful master. CHAPTER XXI. Gerald Huntington lifted his unconscious bride and laid her again on the sofa. Bowles hurried the not unwilling priest from the room. The outlaw chief was alone with the beautiful, senseless form of the hapless girl whom he had torn from the side of her lover before the very altar, and forced away to share the terrible life of a criminal who was in hiding from the stern arm of justice. He knelt down by her side, and took her small white hand in both his own. "She fell before I could place the wedding-ring on her finger," he said: "I will do so now." But in lifting her hand he saw a diamond ring sparkling on one slender finger. He tore it off quickly, and a spasm of jealous rage convulsed the handsome features from which he had cast aside the disfiguring mask. "Valchester's gift, doubtless," he said, holding it scornfully on the tip of his finger. "Let us see what dainty motto the poet chose for his darling!" He held the sparkling circlet up to the light and read the fine lines cut deeply within it: "_Sans peur et sans reproche!_" Then a groan forced itself through his lips that had grown suddenly cold and pallid. "Ah, my God! the _Ardelle_ motto! How comes it on the hand of this child?" But the pale, silent lips of the wronged girl made him no answer. She lay still, with the dark fringe of her lashes lying low upon her white cheek. His eye caught the gleam of a golden locket lying on her breast. "Ah!" he cried, jealously tearing it open, "my rival's dreamy face, perhaps." A woman's curl, soft and dark, fell from the locket into his hand, and seemed to twine about his fingers as if in tenderness. He shut it into his hand, and looked for the expected picture of the hated rival. Two faces smiled out upon him. One was a man's--gentle, tender, dreamy, handsome--the other a face, dark and lovely, with a luring charm about its vivid beauty. The fury, the passion, the jealous rage died out of the outlaw's face as he gazed. His fierce, dark eyes grew soft, then startled, and the whiteness of death overspread his face. He opened his hand, and looked fixedly at the long, curling tress.