Ronald Valchester, tall, handsome and stately, passed between them with his bride upon his arm, and stood expectantly before the clergyman.
Those who stood around said that there never had been a finer-looking bridegroom or a lovelier bride.
Valchester's calm, grave face was very pale, but it was touched with a beautiful, tender seriousness that impressed all who saw it with his deep consciousness of the sanctity of the moment.
The beautiful face of the girl-bride, as seen through the mist of the splendid Brussels veil, glowed with shy blushes, and the thick, curling fringe of her black lashes drooped low upon her softly-rounded cheek.
A moment—the rustle and whisper in the congregation suddenly grew still. The clergyman began to read the solemnly beautiful words of the marriage service. Everyone was looking at the bride. No one noticed that Violet Earle, as she stood at the left of the bride, looked behind her with an anxious, fugitive, eager gaze.
But the next moment all was darkness and confusion. A man sprang up with the swiftness of lightning, and with a daring hand extinguished the pretty chandelier that lighted the chapel.
Cries of alarm and indignation arose. In an instant all was hurry, noise and confusion.
In the instant that the light was extinguished, Jaquelina heard a low cry of pain from her lover's lips, felt him falling to the floor in the darkness. Then she was caught in a pair of strong arms and borne rapidly from the chapel. Struggling and screaming, she was lifted to the back of a horse and borne fleetly away in the arms of her captor.
In the hour that was the happiest of her life, Gerald Huntington had taken his terrible revenge.
"They're away, they're away, over bank, bush and scaur,
'They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar."