Only one was now burning, and dark shadows filled the cabinet. The one light faintly illumined only the centre, and shone with its glare upon the pale, horrified face of the queen.
"Campan," she whispered, raising her arm, and pointing at the single light which remained burning, "if this fourth light goes out like the other three, it is a bad omen for me, and forebodes the approach of misfortune."
At this instant the light flared up and illumined the room more distinctly, then its flame began to die away. One flare more and this light went out, and a deep darkness reigned in the cabinet.
The queen uttered a loud, piercing cry, and sank in a swoon.
CHAPTER VIII.
BEFORE THE MARRIAGE.
The wedding guests were assembled. Madame Bugeaud had just put the veil upon the head of her daughter Margaret, and impressed upon her forehead the last kiss of motherly love. It was the hour when a mother holds her daughter as a child in her arms for the last time, bids adieu to the pleasant pictures of the past, and sends her child from her parents' house to go out into the world and seek a new home. Painful always is such an hour to a mother's heart, for the future is uncertain; no one knows any thing about the new vicissitudes that may arise.
And painful, too, to the wife of Councillor Bugeaud was this parting from her dearly-loved daughter, but she suppressed her deep emotion, restrained the tears in her heart, that not one should fall upon the bridal wreath of her loved daughter. Tears dropped upon the bridal wreath are the heralds of coming misfortune, the seal of pain which destiny stamps upon the brow of the doomed one.
And the tender mother would so gladly have taken away from her loved Margaret every pain and every misfortune! The times were threatening, and the horizon of the present was so full of stormy signs that it was necessary to look into the future with hope.
"Go, my daughter," said Madame Bugeaud, with a smile, regarding which only God knew how much it cost the mother's heart—" go out into your new world, be happy, and may you never regret the moment when yon left the threshold of your father's house to enter a new home!"