"Hush, hush, my bonny bride," said Gerald Huntington, with mocking tenderness. "Ere long I will teach you to love me."
She looked at him with parted lips and dark eyes, but her angry beauty did not move him. His wrath was roused to its highest pitch against her. Passionate love and passionate hate struggled together in his breast.
The heavy curtains parted softly again, and Bowles entered, ushering in a small, frightened-looking priest. Gerald Huntington caught Jaquelina's hand forcibly in his and drew her forward.
"Come, priest, we are waiting," he said, with haughty impatience. "Make us man and wife as soon as you can."
"Oh, never—never!" cried his captive with a shriek of fear and terror, as she broke loose from his hold and fled swiftly toward the heavy hangings in a wild effort at escape.
But as she pushed aside the thick curtains, a dark form barred her farther progress. Gerald Huntington came toward her, laughing carelessly at her cry of disappointment.
"Not so fast, my pretty bird," he said. "You are caged tight and fast. There is no escape for you. I have determined to make you my bride whether you consent or not."
"You cannot," she broke out in passionate, breathless defiance. "You dare not!"
"I dare do anything!" Gerald Huntington replied proudly, and he proved the truth of his words by seizing her firmly by one arm, while Bowles, at a signal from his chief, took her by the other. It was a strange sight. The frightened, trembling little priest standing irresolute in the center of the large apartment, and the lovely young girl struggling desperately with the two masked outlaws; her face pale and convulsed with terror, her dark hair streaming in dishevelled ringlets, the silvery mist of her bridal veil rent and torn, the broken, white pansies falling from her hair and her breast, and strewing the crimson carpet—over all, the flickering glare of the lamplight, and the dark, sinister faces of the outlaws peering through the velvet hangings at the striking scene.
The little priest who had been decoyed to the cave by a clever story of a death-bed in the country, though frightened at the sound of his own voice in that terrible place, felt moved to utter a feeble protest.