“Good-by, sweetheart. In an hour you will be my bride,” he whispered, and then she went away with Betty, a slim, white figure, with loose, bright hair, on which his grave blue eyes lingered with dreamy tenderness. She went on with a heart full of happiness that was disturbed by an uneasy sense of ill. She thought it was the weight of her secret resting on her heart, and sighed to herself: “Oh, I wish I had been brave enough to confess all! But I could not, I could not, and I pray Heaven he may never know the truth now.” The grand drawing-room was thronged with guests when she came down, one hour later, “in gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,” an ideally lovely bride, and met her splendid lover, who drew her hand through his arm and led her before the waiting minister. The crash and peal of the wedding march died away, and, save for the low hum of eager admiration, all was momentary breathless silence. Upon that sudden hush before the ceremony broke a loud, infuriated voice close to the altar’s side, and the two words it uttered were: “Traitoress, die!” Bayard Lorraine glanced quickly up, and saw a stranger--a maniac, he believed--pointing a gleaming pistol at the breast of his beautiful, startled bride. With lightninglike rapidity, he sprang before her, and received in his own breast the bullet that crashed through the air. The beautiful, flower-decked drawing-room of the villa instantly became a scene of confusion, for the bridegroom had fallen at the feet of the bride, and the blood that spurted from his wound dyed the hem of her white satin dress crimson. Women shrieked, fainted, or fell into hysterics, and men rushed wildly to the scene of action. One or two who had seen Prince Gonzaga fire the pistol believed that he was a maniac, and rushed forward to secure him; but he shook them off with furious strength, and made his way to the spot where Fair, with wild screams of anguish, was kneeling by her unconscious lover, calling on his name in an agony of fear and grief. Prince Gonzaga put his thin, dark hands on the shoulders of the white-robed form and lifted her roughly to her feet. “Get up, curse you!” he cried, in a fury of mad passion; and, whirling her fiercely around in front of him, he added: “That shot was meant for you, do you know it? It would have found your heart had he not interposed between us.” Her wild eyes sought his face, and such a shriek of terror and wild dismay rang through the room that every hearer shrank, appalled. She had recognized in the rich Prince Gonzaga the man who had tricked her into that fatal marriage in New York--the man she believed to be dead--Carl Bernicci. Some one put a hand on his shoulder, and said soothingly, as to a dangerous lunatic: “Come away, come away! You have killed Mr. Lorraine, and unless you escape you will be put in prison.”